Avast_Security_News: What’s up with WhatsApp

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Is now the time to move your messaging elsewhere?

Earlier this month, WhatsApp gave its users an ultimatum: accept new data sharing terms or delete their accounts. For some of its billion global users, this was not received well, especially since some of your data would be shared across all of Facebook’s other operations.

The change was indicated through a pop-up message that requires users to agree to the changes before February 8. The aftermath was swift: tens of millions of users signed up for either Signal or Telegram within hours of the news.

According to the New York Times, Telegram said it added more than 25 million users over three days, pushing it to over 500 million users. Signal added nearly 1.3 million users on one day alone, after averaging just 50,000 downloads a day last year. It is now the top downloaded messaging app in India.

Late last week, WhatsApp announced postponing the changes until May 15. But this move by the company deserves further reflection and analysis. The issue is that the changes apply only to how businesses obtain this information. Messages between individuals are still encrypted and not shared with anyone. (At least not yet, and therein lies the issue for WhatsApp, which for several years now has been owned by Facebook.)

The level of trust in Facebook has been eroded, thanks to unfulfilled privacy promises of its executives. The Verge put this analysis together that is worth reviewing. Nevertheless, the Turkish government’s business regulators have begun a probe into WhatsApp’s data collection practices. The agency requested the company not institute its data collection effort, claiming it was illegal.

To try to fight back with the facts, WhatsApp quickly issued this FAQ and sent out this stream of tweets to try to clarify the sharing issue. They're good, and I urge you to review both posts. However, if we take a step back and examine the messaging marketplace there are clearly major differences in the kinds and quantity of data that WhatsApp collects, compared to other Facebook products (including Facebook Messenger, which is a separate smartphone app), Signal and Telegram.

The table below links to explanations on the respective company’s privacy policies (some of which are particularly opaque — especially Facebook’s) and summarizes the data that these apps track. I have placed the links to the official privacy policies of each app, along with what the Apple and Google app stores report. As you can see, Apple has gone the extra mile in its explanations. And WhatsApp has different privacy policies depending on where you live, just to make matters more complex.
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