WhatsApp has been at the centre of criticism for the past few months. This is as a result of its new privacy policy update the Facebook-owned company announced. The privacy policy update should have taken effect since February, but WhatsApp had to postpone it to give people more time to brood over the policy before arriving at a decision. WhatsApp announced May 15th as the new date for when the policy would take effect.
WhatsApp has reportedly filed an affidavit as an attempt of hitting back at the criticisms surrounding its privacy policy. “A review of the privacy policies of many-internet based applications and websites confirms that such policies include provisions describing the information they may collect that are similar to – and in many instances much broader than – those in 2021 (WhatsApp privacy policy) update”, the affidavit filed by WhatsApp says.
WhatsApp released a list of things that would happen to the accounts of users if they refused to accept the privacy policy update by May 15th. The most severe of all these was that users who refused to accept the policy update would get their account permanently deleted; in other words, they would be unable to use the service ever again. With only about a week to when the new policy would take effect, WhatsApp announced that it has rescinded its decision to delete the accounts of users who refused to accept the privacy policy update.
With the affidavit filed to the Delhi High Court (DHC), WhatsApp cited the privacy policies of giant tech companies and widely used apps like Zomato, Zoom, Google, Microsoft, and the government’s tracing app – Aarogya Setu, among other big names. With this affidavit, WhatsApp claims that these apps also collect the same, and even more of the data that it plans to collect.
