Facebook will not allow you to use WhatsApp anymore if you refuse to shareyour data with the company.
The social media giant has been alerting users in India about an update toits terms of service and privacy policy that will be effective startingFebruary. The update in the privacy policy expands on the “Information YouProvide” section with details on what data Facebook collects from WhatsAppusers and how it’s shared with other Facebook products and third parties.
The updated policy also explains “Automatically Collected Information”which includes a vast variety of information that WhatsApp collects on itsusers. Some of this collected information includes the hardware model ofyour phone, operating system information, battery level, signal strength,app version, browser information, mobile network, connection information(including phone number, mobile operator or ISP), language and time zone,IP address, device operations information, and identifiers.
The new policy further reads:
Even if you do not use our location-related features, we use IP addressesand other information like phone number area codes to estimate your generallocation (e.g., city and country).
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And this is only a small portion of what data WhatsApp collects on you, asrevealed by the new policy.
In any case, all of this would be acceptable if users could choose betweensharing their data or not, which had been the case with WhatsApporiginally. However, as per the new policy, people failing to agree withthese terms will lose access to their accounts, Facebook said in thenotification to Indian users.
You can read the new privacy policy for yourself herelink. “Respectfor your privacy is coded into our DNA,” was the forefront of olderWhatsApp policies, but that can no longer be found anywhere.
