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Users The WhatsApp In Brazil, they will have another 90 days to accept the new terms and conditions of use proposed by the company, the same terms that have already caused A wave of criticism against the platform Earlier this year this measure already led to the world being postponed. After an agreement with the Brazilian authorities, “the company states 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 new terms of service on this date”, According to the Federal Prosecutor’s Office This Friday (14).
During this period, the attorney general’s office and other bodies, such as the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), say they will conduct new analyzes and questions for the company. “The company has made itself available for dialogue and clarification regarding the recommendations issued by the Afghan National Planning Agency [Autoridade Nacional de Proteção de Dados] And any other issues related to updating the terms of application, “as stated in a statement from the authorities.
The controversy over the new app policy relates to privacy: following these new terms means accepting the app Sharing certain data with Facebook, The company that owns the instant messaging service, and can profit commercially from this information.
Worldwide, the new terms will not have practical impacts on the privacy of residents of European Union countries, because the bloc’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) prohibits sharing data with The social networking site Facebook. But even so, those who do not accept the new modernization, even if they live in the European Union, will start to have limited jobs from the fifteenth. For example, you will not be able to access your chats list when you open the app. But for now, you can continue to read and respond to messages, in addition to answering audio and video calls, and if notifications are enabled, you can touch them to read or reply to messages and respond to missed calls, according to the company. .
However, after a few weeks of “limited functionality”, the situation for a user who has not accepted will be complicated. “You will not be able to receive incoming calls or notifications, and WhatsApp will stop sending messages and calls to your phone,” the company reported. The time has come, and after receiving increasingly urgent notifications for decision making, users will have to accept the new terms or else they will no longer be able to use WhatsApp “absolutely”. In addition, if the user has not used the platform for more than 120 days, the account will be deleted “in order to maintain security, reduce data retention, and protect users’ privacy.”
Problems in Germany
Outside of the European Union, the data that WhatsApp will share with Facebook companies does not include the content of users’ conversations, since they are encrypted and they cannot even access them. However, information associated with each user’s account and use of the service will be shared. For example, the phone number, the transactions made, the cell phone you are using, and the IP address. WhatsApp also informs that it is possible to share the other data mentioned in the “Information We Collect” section of its Privacy Policy, but it does not specify which ones. This data goes from the profile name to the connections or website.
Although WhatsApp’s new policy does not affect the privacy of its European customers, Johannes Kaspar, Hamburg’s Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information in Germany, was convinced that there were problems with its activation. For this reason, it issued an “emergency ban” for a period of three months in which the company would not be able to “continue to collect data” and demanded that European Union regulators extend this measure to other member states, according to Agence France-Presse.
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“Global criticism of the new terms of use should once again prompt a fundamental overhaul of the approval mechanism,” wrote the German regulatory authority official. He stresses that it is not only a matter of protecting users ‘privacy, but also of avoiding the use of data to “influence voters’ decisions to manipulate democratic elections,” pointing to the upcoming parliamentary elections on September 26 in Germany, where WhatsApp had nearly 60 million users.
The entry into force of this new policy represents a setback for It really shook the corporate image. The messaging app is actually aiming to change its privacy policy on February 8th, but the controversy surrounding the move forced it to delay its entry into force. “There was a lot of misinformation causing concern and we want to help everyone understand our principles and facts,” the company said in a statement. The text adds: “We will do more to remove misinformation about how privacy and security work on WhatsApp.”
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