Conveyed to Indian govt our commitment to protect privacy of personal conversations: WhatsApp
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Conveyed to Indian govt our commitment to protect privacy of personal conversations: WhatsApp
PTI / Feb 19, 2021, 16:36 IST
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Whatsapp will also provide a banner offering additional information on the update. (File photo)
NEW DELHI: Hours after announcing the decision to go ahead with its controversial privacy policy update, WhatsApp on Friday said it has conveyed to the Indian government that it remains committed to protection of privacy of personal conversations across the country.
Last month, the messaging app had faced a volley of questions from the government after it informed users that it was updating its privacy policy under which it could share limited user data with Facebook and its group firms.
February 18, 2021
The Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology Technology sent a letter to WhatsApp last month, interrogating changes the Facebook-owned messaging app had made to its privacy policy. MediaNama has obtained a copy of the letter under the RTI Act. “These changes enable WhatsApp, and other Facebook Companies, to make invasive and precise inferences about users which may not be reasonably foreseen or expected by users in the ordinary course of accessing these services,” MEITY said in the letter. “Whether this will enable better provision of services to users or not is besides the point, the issue is the impact it has on informational privacy, data security and user choice.”
With the screenshots, the blog site explained the changes that the new policy will bring to the messaging platform and the new WhatsApp beta for Android 2.21.4.13, WhatsApp is working to improve the communication to the users with a new informative alert.
The Supreme Court on Monday sought responses from the Centre and Facebook-owned WhatsApp within a month on a fresh plea alleging lower standards of privacy for Indian users as compared with European counterparts. A Bench, headed by Chief Justice S A Bobde, was hearing an interim application filed by petitioners, Karmanya Singh Sareen and Shreya Sethi, in a pending petition of 2017. Their lawyer, Shyam Diwan, said the messaging app was differentiating between European countries and India in its policy. The apex court said people have grave apprehensions that they will lose their privacy, and it is our duty to protect them. It added people value their privacy more than the value of the company, which might be in trillions. “You (Facebook and WhatsApp) may be two or three trillion (dollar) companies. But people value their privacy. It is our duty and we have to protect people s privacy,” Bobde said.
Wednesday, 10 Feb 2021 11:43 AM MYT
According to eMarketer data from last year, WhatsApp had more than 99 per cent of mobile messaging app users in Brazil, 97 per cent in India and 52 per cent in the United States. ― AFP pic
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WASHINGTON, Feb 10 ― When WhatsApp users began to raise concerns about a new privacy policy being rolled out, members of a Washington pickup soccer group decided to switch their communications to rival messaging platform Signal, ditching the Facebook-owned service.
The shift was “about moving as many users away from the Facebook empire, which for my liking has become way too big and powerful,” said Bernhard Fleck, one of the players.