The new Terms of Service are active since a few days. What is the latest news from WhatsApp?
| Common questions | Answers |
|---|---|
| Topic about? | Terms of Service |
| Article for? | WhatsApp for Android and iOS. |
| Previous news? | WhatsApp beta for Android 2.21.11.1: what’s new? WhatsApp is rolling out the new archive! |
We talked about the Terms of Service since the start, when we spotted the news the last year. We have also created a dedicated page that collects all useful articles about them.
Now that the Terms of Service are active, what’s really changed? WhatsApp has announced in their Help Center some minutes ago that “The changes are related to optional business features on WhatsApp, and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data.”.
WhatsApp states that chats and calls are end-to-end encrypted, so WhatsApp and Facebook cannot read or listen to them. WhatsApp declares that, in order to provide a better support over 175 million people who message and call a business account every day, they introduced new tools to store and manage chats with business accounts. In order to respond to customers, some businesses can now use cloud providers to host services that Facebook plans to offer, and these businesses are clearly label in the chat: so it’s up to you if you want really to contact them. Even if you discover a business account from Facebook or Instagram, this action might be used to generate targeted advertisements.
Some WhatsApp business profiles can already use Facebook Shops, so their customers can discover their products. When you interact with Facebook Shops, WhatsApp will let you know how this action is shared with Facebook.
Once again, these features are totally optional. It’s up to you if you want to chat with a business account that uses cloud providers. It’s up to you if you want to discover new business accounts from Facebook or Instagram. It’s up to you if you want to use Facebook Shops.
The new privacy policy update do not affect your personal calls, status updates and messages with friends and family: you can continue to chat safely.
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