There are alternatives including Signal and Telegram – both of which have seen a surge of new users lately. According to the Digital Privacy Group Electronic Frontier Foundation, Signal and WhatsApp are good choices for most people. The Wall Street Journal also went over the pros and cons of several popular messaging apps.
The reason WhatsApp recently informed app users about revised privacy rules is because Facebook is trying to make WhatsApp a place to chat with an airline about a missed flight, search for purses, and pay for stuff.
WhatsApp’s policies have been changed to reflect the possibility of commercial transactions involving a mix of activities between Facebook apps – for example, a purse you browse in WhatsApp might later show up in your Instagram app.
Unfortunately, WhatsApp did a terrible job of explaining what’s new in its privacy policy. It took me and Kash, a privacy rockstar, a lot of reporting to figure this out.
I would also like to address deeper reasons for the misunderstandings.
First, this is a holdover from Facebook’s history of being unconcerned with our personal information and unruly about how it’s used by the company or its partners. It’s no wonder people assumed Facebook had bloody changed WhatsApp policies.
Second, people have understood that privacy policies are confusing and we really don’t have the power to get companies to collect less data.
“That’s the problem with the nature of privacy law in the United States,” Kash said. “As long as they tell you they’re doing it in a policy you’re unlikely to read, they’re free to do whatever they want.”
