Do you remember the start of the year, when Elon Musk called for WhatsApp to be deleted and half of your acquaintances switched to Telegram and the other to Signal?
All this because WhatsApp was about to change the terms of use and wanted to force its users to agree that the communication platform could share their data with the parent company – Facebook.
So the world’s most greedy user data gathering tool. From the moment Facebook bought the social network WhatsApp for $ 19.3 billion in 2014, it was clear that the day of reckoning was coming. That is, extract data from WhatsApp users.
Originally, conditions were supposed to change in February, but WhatsApp, after a wave of global discontent and an exodus of panic users, withdrew from the plan and moved the date to May. And we see you, May is in full swing and the day of the launching on the calendar, specifically Saturday, May 15th.
Millions of users have already received an in-app warning: If they do not agree to the new terms, they will lose access to their WhatsApp accounts and the messages in them. Starting on Saturday, most of the app’s 2 billion users have truly embarked on a new era, and Facebook is not holding back on its rollout this time.
The app even issued instructions on how to delete an account if the user does not agree to the new terms. But what happens if you don’t click on Conditions?
The account appears to be suspended within a few weeks, but users will still get notifications that they have received a new message. They will not be able to read it and of course they will not answer it. You also cannot place or make video calls from the app.
And Facebook added in a statement to change the conditions: “After several weeks of limited operation, you will not be able to receive calls or notifications, and WhatsApp will stop notifying you of messages and phone calls.”
Although such an approach may sound harsh, in reality it remains a challenge for Facebook. In the past, the company applied changes to terms under the password all or nothing – if users didn’t click on the changes, they simply lost their features from day one. No transition period.
In response to the upcoming warning on Saturday, the German Facebook regulator issued a decision banning social networks from processing WhatsApp users’ personal data, as they consider the new conditions for using the app illegal.
According to him, they are violating the principles of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) established by the European Union, which aim to protect citizens of member states from data mining.
Of course, Facebook does not like the ban, and the company, like the WhatsApp spokesperson, has objected it to a fundamental misunderstanding of the terms of use of the new calling app. According to Facebook, users’ data will be safe and messages will remain private.
However, German authorities have called on the European Data Protection Council to intervene and issue a European-wide regulation that applies to all 27 member states.
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