“ There ’ s been a set of misinformation and confusion around our holocene update and we want to help everyone understand the facts behind how WhatsApp protects people ’ s privacy and security, ” a WhatsApp spokesperson said in an electronic mail to The Verge. “ Going forth, we ’ rhenium going to provide updates to people in the Status pill so people hear from WhatsApp directly. Our first update reaffirms that WhatsApp can not see your personal messages, and neither can Facebook, because they are protected by end-to-end encoding. ”
The messages read “ One thing that isn ’ triiodothyronine modern is our commitment to your privacy, ” and a reminder that “ WhatsApp can ’ deoxythymidine monophosphate read or listen to your personal conversations as they ’ ra throughout encrypted. ”
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Reading: WhatsApp is using Status messages—its version of Stories— to try to reassure users about privacy
The messages are separate of a larger effort from WhatsApp to dispel misperceptions about an approaching update to its privacy policy. The update is meant to explain how businesses that use WhatsApp for customer service may store logs of their chats on Facebook ’ sulfur servers. WhatsApp previewed the changes to occupation chats in November. Given Facebook ’ s history of privacy blunders, however, users misinterpreted the changes to the privacy policy to mean WhatsApp would require sharing medium profile data with Facebook.
The company posted an FAQ page about the changes, and has pushed back the date the update will take consequence from February to May. It issued a statement earlier this calendar month addressing the confusion to reiterate what the new privacy policy would cover :
The update does not change WhatsApp ’ mho data sharing practices with Facebook and does not impact how people communicate privately with friends or syndicate wherever they are in the world. WhatsApp remains deeply committed to protecting people ’ south privacy. We are communicating immediately with users through WhatsApp about these changes so they have time to review the new policy over the run of the next calendar month
Amid the ensuing confusion, rival messaging apps Signal and Telegram have both recently seen a tide in raw users. Telegram said last week it ’ second added the ability for users to import their chat history from WhatsApp. And Signal has added new mainstream chat features like animated stickers and wallpapers to its app .
