“As we announced in October, WhatsApp wants to make it easier for people to both make a purchase and get help from a business directly on WhatsApp. While most people use WhatsApp to chat with friends and family, increasingly people are reaching out to businesses as well. To further increase transparency, we updated the privacy policy to describe that going forward businesses can choose to receive secure hosting services from our parent company Facebook to help manage their communications with their customers on WhatsApp. Though of course, it remains up to the user whether or not they want to message with a business on WhatsApp,” WhatsApp mentioned in a statement to The Verge.
“The update does not change WhatsApp’s data sharing practices with Facebook and does not impact how people communicate privately with friends or family wherever they are in the world. WhatsApp remains deeply committed to protecting people’s privacy. We are communicating directly with users through WhatsApp about these changes so they have time to review the new policy over the course of the next month,” the statement added.
The update comes in the wake of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 2020 announcement that the corporation is working really hard to merge Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp. And as persons study by way of the lengthy list of information that the app would be collecting below its updated policy, lots of have been crying foul.