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WhatsApp is the biggest message sharing app on the planet. Roughly half the people in India use it, which already accounts for over 450 million customers. While that is a lot, it\u2019s less than a quarter of WhatsApp\u2019s two billion users. As such, anything they do gets a lot of attention, even more since they were bought by Facebook a while back.\xa0

This was demonstrated recently when they released some brand new terms of service (ToS) that seemed to go very much against their previous reputation for privacy. One of the major issues in the ToS is the requirement to allow WhatsApp to share your data with Facebook. Also upsetting to many people was the stark either/or ultimatum: accept the terms or you will no longer be able to use the app. Since we value data privacy around the halls of TARTLE we\u2019ve been following the issue closely and have addressed developments in this space a couple of times already.\xa0

As you might imagine, WhatsApp has taken a lot of flak for the new ToS and are now in full damage control mode. For one, it looks like the person responsible for the \u2018accept our terms or else\u2019 messaging has been fired. Yet, millions of users have switched to other messaging apps. After Elon Musk tweeted an endorsement, Signal downloads went through the rough. Telegram also has seen a surge of 25 million users while other, smaller apps like Viber are publically cutting ties with Facebook.

So what is WhatsApp doing to staunch the bleeding? Other than firing someone for their lousy PR skills, WhatsApp and Facebook representatives are out in force trying to clarify the new ToS. The biggest clarification they are trying to make is that there is no change to messages between friends and family. Those are still completely private. According to them, the only privacy change relates to messages to businesses, which of course is completely optional. That\u2019s great and all, but one does wonder why they didn\u2019t just say that clearly at the beginning. When the backlash first started they just issued \u2018no comment\u2019 statements. Why did it take so much time to craft a real statement if everything is fine? At the very least, their messaging is still in poor shape.\xa0

Moving on, the official statements also clarify that neither WhatsApp nor Facebook can actually view your private messages. What comes next is more interesting. They say that their plan for messaging integration is still underway, which means that Facebook is still trying to figure out how to bring the WhatsApp people into their bigger monetization strategy. Which, in all honesty, likely means the ToS for WhatsApp will be going through another revision or two in the near future. Or it will just get merged with the very profitable Messenger.\xa0

For now, though, they aren\u2019t listening in or encouraging others to do so, nor are they keeping logs of your contacts or location. Which is very good since most of the cellphone and landline companies do exactly that. This is one of the high points in WhatApp\u2019s recent statements. They rightly consider it a privacy and security risk to keep those kinds of records. Just having them, means you need more servers which is both an expense and a potential path for a hacker. And of course, losing control of such records would completely undermine trust in the company.\xa0

Going deeper into the statement there are a few cleverly worded statements such as how WhatsApp doesn\u2019t share any group data for ad purposes, which implies that they are sharing data across apps for some purposes. It may also be that they don\u2019t even need to share all that group data to get what they need. One also wonders if this contradicts the above assurances about maintaining the privacy of private messages.

This is why TARTLE is so needed. We don\u2019t play games, we tell why we exist and what our intentions are upfront and in simple language. You sign up with us and we won\u2019t even share your data with ourselves, much less a third party. It goes only where you want when you want it to. That\u2019s it. Your privacy is worth protecting and TARTLE wants to help you do that.

What\u2019s your data worth? www.tartle.co