This changes from Saturday on Whatsapp

Whatsapp’s new terms and conditions have been causing discussions for months. Originally, the messaging service announced in January that it would change terms and conditions to February 8: but because many users felt under pressure from the short notice, the change was postponed to Saturday, May 15 after users’ protests.

The new terms and conditions must be accepted if you want to continue to use WhatsApp. How “Watson»Reports that anyone who refuses to accept the terms and conditions will no longer have access to the chat menu in the app after a few weeks. This means that only new messages can be read or replied to via notifications.

After a certain period of time, it doesn’t work either: “After a few weeks of being restricted, you won’t get any calls or notifications. Whatsapp will no longer send messages or calls to your mobile phone, “Whatsapp operators write.

In fact, only business accounts were affected …

The change that must be accepted does not affect private users at this time. Conversations between friends or family members remain private and encrypted as they were before the change, such as20 minutes“mentioned.

However, chats with business accounts are particularly affected. There are two types: a business account and a private business account with a cloud provider. A conversation with a normal business account can be compared to chatting with friends. But anyone who writes with a business account with a cloud service provider is affected by the new terms and conditions: they allow details from conversations with such private business accounts to be used for targeted ads on the parent company of Whatsapp Facebook.

If you want to protect your privacy, you should avoid contacting these accounts. Since corporate accounts are clearly categorized, it is easy to work with.

But …

So why the big protest when changing terms and conditions in the winter? This has to do with the amount of data that Whatsapp already knows from its users and shares with Facebook. Since the companies work together, data from WhatsApp profiles can be linked to data from Facebook or Instagram profiles. In this way, the Facebook group, which owns all three platforms, can create an overall picture of its users.

Whatsapp cannot read users’ messages, but it does collect metadata such as: Who is communicating with whom? Who uses any devices? Specifically, Whatsapp knows contact information, contacts, location information, usage information, device and contact data, diagnostic data, and, in some countries, diagnostic data, purchase history and payment methods for its customers. The company also knows the metadata, for example, when users are online, how often and how often they use the app and how long they use the app, or whether they use Whatsapp on their cell phones or on their computers.

Outside of Europe, Facebook now wants to use this metadata for personalized advertising on Facebook and Instagram. The collected data enables the creation of movement profiles, relationship profiles, or even psychological profiles for them. Companies can infer from the data where users live, work, or when they sleep or how they do.

So if you do not want to agree to the terms and conditions or want to delete the app in general, you should backup chat history and files from WhatsApp before Saturday. Popular alternatives to Whatsapp messenger is Threema or Signal.