On late Tuesday evening, WhatsApp forced users to agree to its new privacy rules to continue using the app. The Facebook-owned messaging app started sending in-app notifications to its users informing them about a change in its Terms of Service and its privacy policy.
The notification sent by the firm to Android and iOS users read “WhatsApp is updating its terms and privacy policy,”
The in-app notification read, “How businesses can use Facebook hosted services to store and manage their WhatsApp chats and How we (WhatsApp) partners with Facebook to offer integrations across the Facebook Company Products.”
As per the information the new terms of service and privacy policy will go live from 8 February and if the users don’t accept the new terms of service they will not be able to access their Whatsapp accounts from 8 February.
Facebook owned Whatsapp wrote, “Our Services have optional features which, if used by you, require us to collect additional information to provide such features. You will be notified of such a collection, as appropriate. If you choose not to provide the information needed to use a feature, you will be unable to use the feature. For example, you cannot share your location with your contacts if you do not permit us to collect your location data from your device. Permissions can be managed through your Settings menu on both Android and iOS devices.”
“We collect information about your activity on our Services, like service-related, diagnostic, and performance information. This includes information about your activity (including how you use our Services, your Services settings, how you interact with others using our Services (including when you interact with a business), and the time, frequency, and duration of your activities and interactions), log files, and diagnostic, crash, website, and performance logs and reports,” it added.
Whatsapp further drafted, “This also includes information about when you registered to use our Services; the features you use like our messaging, calling, Status, groups (including group name, group picture, group description), payments or business features; profile photo, “about” information; whether you are online when you last used our Services (your “last seen”) and when you last updated your “about” information.”
