Chamath Palihapitiya, the CEO of Social Capital and chairman of Virgin Galactic, tweeted: Nevertheless, in the wake of the policy update, several high-profile social-media users announced they were deleting WhatsApp and began guiding users to alternative messaging apps Signal and Telegram. Publisher Wired confirmed with WhatsApp that last week's privacy policy changes do not actually impact WhatsApp's existing practices or behaviour around sharing data with Facebook. The window to opt out was closed after 30 days. Only users that opted out of sharing data with Facebook at that time were exempt from the policy, and will continue to be. WhatsApp has shared information on the majority of its users with Facebook since August 2016, when it rolled out a major update to its privacy policy.

'Accept our data grab or get out' is pretty far from what consent should look like under laws like GDPR 2/9īut in fact, the revision does not reflect a new data-sharing policy. Privacy International tweeted that the 'accept our data grab or get out' approach is 'pretty far from what consent should look like under laws like GDPR'.įirst this goes to show how much Facebook values their users' data over their users. Privacy activists were quick to condemn the mandatory transfer of data. Of particular concern to users is the removal of a passage in the privacy policy that had allowed users to opt out of sharing WhatsApp account information, such as their phone number or location, with Facebook.

Whatsapp signal