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What are your India plans, especially at a time when hoards of Indians are moving to apps such as Signal and Telegram after WhatsApp’s recent policy communication?
India has always been quick to adapt to new technology, and it’s exciting to see it happening again. To see India make a choice that favours data privacy and a new, more privacy-oriented messenger so strongly is momentous to say the least.
I believe that the rapid pace at which we have become the #1 and the most popular app in India stands testament to the fact that the people of India greatly value their privacy. When it comes to India, such a huge transition in such a short time span has only strengthened our belief and emboldened us to keep the momentum going in India.
THE STANDARD
SCI & TECH
When news broke that WhatsApp, a free messaging application, would require users to share their data with Facebook, privacy concerns emerged.
The Facebook-owned app changed its privacy policy in January, asking users to accept new terms which would see it share data with its parent company. Failure to agree with the new terms meant that the users WhatsApp accounts would be deactivated.
In the expected changes are details of what will be shared on Facebook, including account registration details like one’s phone number, transaction data, service-related information, information on how you interact with others (including businesses) when using Whatsapp Services, mobile device information and your IP address.
App Signal Messenger went down for 24-hours on Saturday after 8.8million people downloaded the encrypted service
The exodus was caused by rival WhatsApp s January 4 message on its controversial privacy update
The firm was criticised for sending the notification, which seemed to suggest changes to the data it would share with its parent company Facebook
According to data from analytics firm Sensor Tower, Signal was downloaded 246,000 times in the week before WhatsApp announced the change, and 8.8 million times the week after
In the US, downloads went from 63,000 to 1.1 million, with numbers jumping from 12,000 to 2.7 million in India and 7,400 to 191,000 in the UK