To combat what they call "misinformation" causing unjustified "concerns" , WhatsApp teams have announced that they are postponing the implementation of these new rules for users: they will not come overseas chinese in australia data into force on February 8, but on May 15. "No one will have their account suspended or deleted on February 8," the company specifies: such a scenario could have occurred if a user refused the new conditions of use of the messaging service. They were invited to express their opinion on the subject in a message that has appeared for most users in recent days.
Read also Article reserved for our subscribers How Facebook wants to make WhatsApp profitable by changing its personal data policy
This update has sparked a lot of negative reactions due to the often unwelcome redefinition of the scope of data from WhatsApp that will be shared with its parent company, Facebook. In the Americas, Africa and Asia, it was planned that from February 8, WhatsApp users would accept that their personal data collected by the application (username, phone number, IP addresses and information about users' devices) could also be used by Facebook.
GDPR prevented any obligation in Europe
Such data transfers are planned in a context where Facebook is trying to unify the user experience on its main applications (Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp), but also in a context where WhatsApp is evolving to offer new options to "business" accounts. Mark Zuckerberg's social network is indeed seeking to make its costly acquisition profitable (it bought WhatsApp in 2014 for 20 billion dollars), by opening the way to a wider use of the messaging service by companies wishing to sell products or services there.
In Europe, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) had prevented these changes from being made mandatory. But doubts and distrust of Facebook have cast a shadow over WhatsApp, leading many French people to question their use of the service. The confusion over this update has also triggered the launch of an investigation by the Italian authority responsible for the protection of personal data into the information collected and processed by WhatsApp.
