The time has come in a month: On May 15, the new Whatsapp Terms of Use will actually come into force. Since their announcement in January, these have caused severe criticism on the Internet and from Whatsapp users. As a result, Facebook, which includes Whatsapp, has postponed the initial implementation of the new guidelines from February 8th to May.
It remains to be seen whether the new terms and conditions can be implemented as announced, because the Hamburg data protection officer Johannes Caspar has now opened proceedings against Facebook in Germany, as reported by «Spiegel “German News”». He wanted to ensure that the Facebook group is not allowed to collect and evaluate data from Whatsapp.
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The new terms and conditions
A decision in this case should be made before May 15th. To make this possible, an urgency procedure based on the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been initiated against Facebook in Ireland. “WhatsApp is now used by almost 60 million people in Germany and is by far the most widely used social media application, ahead of Facebook,” said Caspar. It is therefore important to him to prevent the misuse of this data power.
According to a Facebook spokesperson, there is nothing to worry about. So nothing changes to the terms of use when it comes to chatting among friends or acquaintances. Because private messages remain encrypted and private even under the new regulations. The new terms and conditions relate primarily to communication between companies and their customers.
In the future, Whatsapp will offer, among other things, more options for Whatsapp users to sell products that have been displayed on another platform such as Instagram – which is also part of Facebook. To make this possible, the group would like to better link the data on the various platforms.
Migration to other apps
Not only company accounts but all users have to agree to the new terms of use. Anyone who does not do this will only be able to use WhatsApp to a limited extent from May 15th. According to the company, you should still receive calls and notifications, but they cannot be read in the app. You will also no longer be able to send text messages yourself.
As a result, competing chat services such as Signal, or Telegram recorded a sharp increase in user numbers at the beginning of this year.
