WhatsApp announces updated private policy

“Neither WhatsApp nor Facebook can see the content shared by a user with family and friends”, the social media giant announced updated terms of services and privacy policy for business and private customers.
“Our commitment to your privacy isn’t changing. Your conversations are still protected by end-to-end encryption, which means no one outside of your chats, not even WhatsApp or Facebook, can read or listen to them,” said WhatsApp in a detailed statement. However, the platform has added new features as well.

New features
Now users can ask questions with businesses, make purchases and retrieve information, and simplify the layout of the privacy policy, etc. Additional privacy features, such as setting messages to disappear and controlling who can add a user to groups, give you an added layer of privacy, mentioned WhatsApp. These added features of the platform will provide customers easier navigation and user experience.
In the new privacy policy, WhatsApp also confirmed that neither WhatsApp nor Facebook can see the content shared by a user with family and friends, including personal messages and calls, shared attachments, or locations. “We do not retain your messages in the ordinary course of providing our Services to you. Instead, your messages are stored on your device and not typically stored on our servers. Once your messages are delivered, they are deleted from our servers,”.
“Safety, security, and integrity are an integral part of our Services. We use the information we have to verify accounts and activity; combat harmful conduct; protect users against bad experiences and spam; and promote safety, security, and integrity on and off our Services, such as by investigating suspicious activity or violations of our Terms and policies, and to ensure our Services are being used legally,” it added.
Followed by the notice issued by the Supreme court on Monday, Facebook and WhatsApp and sought their response on a plea challenging WhatsApp’s latest privacy policy which was introduced in January this year in India. “There is a concern that circuit of messages is revealed by WhatsApp,” the apex court observed. During the hearing, senior advocates Kapil Sibal and Arvind Datar appearing for WhatsApp and Facebook respectively denied the allegations and called this “misinformation”.
The petitioner of the case sought guidelines to safeguard the personal data and privacy of over 400 million Indian WhatsApp users, which in turn acquired an interim stay on the operation of the new Privacy Policy of WhatsApp. The plea stated that the 2021 policy of WhatsApp is “highly invasive and has been unilaterally forced upon Indian internet users”.
The WhatsApp privacy policy introduced in January was mandating its users to accept its terms and conditions, failing which the accounts and services would be terminated after February 8, 2021, for the respective user. Followed by the severe criticism over the privacy policy, WhatsApp has come up with clarification through Twitter with a statement saying “no one will have their account suspended or deleted on February 8 and we will be moving back our business plans until after May.”