Terms of Service

Terms of Service

We understand your concerns about the new Terms of Service of WhatsApp, that take effect on May 15th, 2021 on WhatsApp for Android and iOS. For this reason, I’ve published several articles in these months, in order to explain the real situation in detail, without misunderstandings and leaving out any important information you should know. You can discover the full story below:

  1. WhatsApp is going to update their Terms of Service in 2021: this is the first article on the web where we announced that WhatsApp was going to update the Terms of Service. WABetaInfo was the first source to announce them on the web.
  2. Are our chats and calls safe with new Terms of Service?: in this article I’ve explained that messages and calls are end-to-end encrypted, that prevents WhatsApp, Facebook and other people to see their content. It also explains the real change about Terms of Service, that introduce solution/cloud providers for some business accounts. Business accounts that use cloud providers have “super powers”, because they can store and manage your chat with them better. Their own privacy policy (that doesn’t depend on WhatsApp), in some cases, might let them use the stored chat to generate targeted advertisements on Facebook. You can avoid interacting with these business accounts (that are easily marked in the conversation, so the user always knows if he is chatting with a business account that stores the chat) because it’s obviously optional to chat with a business account.
  3. Indian government asks to WhatsApp how user data is shared: the Indian government asks WhatsApp to respect the Indian user data security and to withdraw the upcoming terms, sending several questions.
  4. WhatsApp is still a solution for your privacy: we explained what’s the real issue with the new Terms of Service and that there is a way to avoid the bad situation, with a flow chart.
  5. Official response from WhatsApp about Terms of Service: this article includes the official tweet from WhatsApp that clarifies the situation, but I understand it might not be enough yet for some users. For this reason I continued to write new articles including more information.
  6. WhatsApp officially postpones new Terms of Service: in this article we explained that WhatsApp decided to postpone the new Terms of Service, and why.
  7. Understanding Apple Privacy Labels for WhatsApp: this is one of the best articles with important details about how WhatsApp processes data, such as device and user info, coarse location and more. You won’t find a similar description on the web published before this article. Not even on the official WhatsApp website or FAQ.
    These information are not used for profiling you and they aren’t used to generate targeted advertisements. It also includes an important tweet from the WhatsApp CEO about WhatsApp logs: they don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging or calling.
  8. WhatsApp is asking to accept Terms of Service again: in this article we posted the most important and frequently asked questions about the Terms of Service.
  9. What happens after May 15th?: this article shows all the differences between people that have accepted the new Terms of Service and other users that didn’t accept them yet. It includes the list of limitations applied to your WhatsApp account after May 15th if you don’t accept the terms, but it also explains why it’s good to accept if you follow a proper way to use WhatsApp.
  10. Latest news about Terms of Service from WhatsApp: The Terms of Service are active and WhatsApp has announced again that your personal messages are not affected by the privacy policy update, but it’s changing the way you chat with specific business accounts.
  11. Some users can accept the new Terms of Service within June 19th!: The Terms of Service are active, but some users can still accept them within June 19th.
  12. WhatsApp won’t limit the functionalities of the app in India: all Indians can continue using WhatsApp without any limitation if they don’t accept the Terms of Service.
  13. News about Terms of Service: they will be optional: WhatsApp will finally make the updated Terms of Service optional, and you have to review and accept them if you want to chat with specific business accounts!

This page will be updated when new info and articles are available. You can also follow WABetaInfo on Twitter to be informed when news and articles are available.