WhatsApp will make a mandatory privacy change from Saturday. Understand

WhatsApp will begin on Saturday (15) to force users to accept the new privacy policies. According to the company, those who refuse to accept the new terms may gradually lose access to the messaging app. Contrary to what has been reported in some social networks, WhatsApp said to CNN Brasil Business This will not delete the user account.

Starting on Saturday, a screen should appear in the app asking you to accept the new terms. The person will continue to receive message and call notifications. However, over time, these functions will be disabled until the user accepts the new rules.

In your Official site, WhatsApp states that “the use of the app’s features will be limited until you accept the updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, however, these changes will not be made to all users at the same time.” What will happen then is that if you do not accept the new terms, the user will lose free access to WhatsApp over a period of days or even months. But your account will continue to existAccording to the company.

What are the changes?

The changes are controversial and were first announced in October 2020. Now, they will become mandatory. The change makes it mandatory to share information such as phone number, transaction data, IP address, device data, and data for interactions with other contacts, among others.

In January of this year, WhatsApp stated, “This update does not change the data-sharing practices between WhatsApp and Facebook, nor does it affect how people communicate privately with their friends and family anywhere in the world.” He also mentioned that all messages exchanged in the app have end-to-end encryption, which means that only people who participate in a conversation can access what was sent.

According to Christian Pironi, law and technology coordinator at the Rio de Janeiro Institute of Technology and Society (ITS), the user You will not be affected in conversations with other individuals, But in letters that are exchanged with business accounts – and in these cases, the WhatsApp cannot claim to have end-to-end encryption.

“When we talk to a company on the app, we’re not talking directly with the company, but with a middleman who conveys suspicions to the organization – which, by itself, actually kills the crypto. Saying.

“ The user needs to be clear that when speaking to a company, he does not have a direct relationship with the company, he has no direct encryption, that is, there is a middleman, and that medium could be Facebook – and, given that it is Facebook, it is clear that WhatsApp will share the data with the network. Social, as a service provider, “he says.

Patricia Peck, an attorney specializing in digital law and data protection at PG Advogados, agrees with Perrone and says that “the new privacy policy fails to ensure that the encryption is protected in conversations with business accounts.” You talk about an “abusive practice.”

What is clear, according to experts, is that the changes focus on conversations with accounts WhatsApp for business And it’s not the good morning messages that your great aunt sends you. a WhatsApp PaySince it only works on personal accounts, it shouldn’t be affected either.

At the time this report was published, WhatsApp had not responded to a request CNN Brasil Business To comment on crypto in his Business Edition with the new changes.

What does the district authority say?

The National Data Protection Authority (ANPD), a federal government agency, on Friday (14), A. Notice As he stated, “WhatsApp reports that it will not close any account, and that no user in Brazil will lose access to the application resources in 90 days after May 15 as a result of the entry into force of the new privacy policy and the new terms on this date.”

In those 90 days, the responsible agencies must review the application again to find any disagreements.

Despite the hacking of the Mark Zuckerberg app, ANPD states that “the privacy policy and data processing practices provided by WhatsApp may, in principle, constitute violations of the rights of personal data holders.” “Enterprises expressed concern about the potential effects on competition and from the perspective of consumer protection and defense,” the agency said.

What if I don’t want to accept it?

If a user chooses not to accept the new WhatsApp policies, even though their account still exists, they will not be able to access the app’s features anymore. The solution then would be to switch to other apps, such as Telegram, Signal, and WeChat.

From January to April 2021, Signal had a download increase of 1,192% compared to 2020, after it had been downloaded around 64.6 million times. Telegram also grew earlier this year, seeing a 98% increase in downloads, while WhatsApp fell 43% in the same period.

All applications offer the same functionality – calling, chatting, and sending media. But, according to Zach Duffman, founder and CEO of Digital Barriers, which monitors app security, Signal is the least that collects data from users, followed by Telegram, while Mark Zuckerberg app (WhatsApp and Messenger) are the ones that collect the most information.

“Yes, Signal security is better than WhatsApp security,” Doffman said in his column in Forbes magazine. “Both use the encryption protocol, but while Signal is completely open source – which means it can be scanned for vulnerabilities by security researchers – WhatsApp uses its own propagation method,” he says, emphasizing that Both are end-to-end encrypted And that user content is safe in both applications.

“The main security vulnerability in WhatsApp is the cloud backup option, which stores your chat history, unencrypted, in the Google or Apple cloud. Signal does not offer such an option, for security reasons,” he explains.