Looks like Facebook is on the road to making good on their WhatsApp investment.
You may have recently received a notification when you fired up WhatsApp--one that splashed an updated Terms of Service notification. Well if you haven’t already, you will.
Terms of Service--that unquestionably boring piece of legalese that precedes using any type of service--are a necessary evil. They’re required, they’re detailed, arduous even, but in virtually every instance end users will perfunctorily tap that ‘Accept’ button and go on with the show.
But these terms of service often bury details regarding service usage that can often imply a less than favourable experience, especially when using certain features or at specific instances--like giving the service provider complete access to your contact list, or access to the device cameras, location tracking and the like. The implications of these clauses could range from being minor annoyances to a flagrant invasions of privacy.
I dived into WhatsApp’s updated Terms of Service--here’s what it means for you.
What the updated terms imply
The crux of the update stems from the fact that WhatsApp is exploring ways for businesses to communicate with users. If you do choose to accept these new terms (and you can opt out--more on this later,) your WhatsApp feed could now include things like restaurant order updates, appointment information, service updates, as well as messages that contain marking information for something a user may be interested in. Bottomline: don’t be surprised if you receive push notifications or marketing offers in future.
They will however give users the ability to manage these communications, although it isn’t clear whether we’ll be able to turn them off completely, or merely reduce their frequency.
User information from WhatsApp will be shared with Facebook and the Facebook family of companies, including your phone number from WhatsApp. The reason behind this, states Facebook, is to enable the company to ‘coordinate more and improve experiences across our services and those of Facebook and the Facebook family.’
Note that besides WhatsApp, the Facebook family of companies includes Ad serving and measurement platform Atlas, their payments platform Facebook Payments, virtual reality solution Oculus, location-tracking service Moves, and of course Instagram.
No content that is shared on WhatsApp including messages, photos, videos and account information will be shared to Facebook for others to see. Further they state that when users use the latest version of WhatsApp, all messages sent between users will be end-to-end encrypted, which means nobody else--not even Facebook--will be able to view the contents of the messages. Outside of this, however, information such as the user’s phone numbers, the time of use, and the quantity and frequency of app usage are fully visible to Facebook.
The updated Terms of Services also clarifies that there will continue to be no banner ads on WhatsApp--good to know that the clean interface we’re accustomed to is staying that way.
Opting out
However, you can choose to opt out of sharing your account information with Facebook to improve their ads and products experiences, you can do so--either during or even after accepting the updated Terms of Service (for up to 30 days) by accessing these settings in WhatsApp.
If you are an existing WhatsApp user, you can choose not to share your account information with Facebook. If you aren’t a Facebook user, you can continue to use WhatsApp without being required to create a Facebook account.
Other Terms of Service clauses you need to know about
While going through the Terms of Service, I also came across these important clauses that I believe warranted surfacing:
- The user will grant to the WhatsApp service access to the all of their phone contacts: this includes the ones that are already on Whatsapp as well as other non-WhatsApp users in their contacts. And this will be done on a regular basis. Read that again: even details of your contacts who are not on WhatsApp will be accessible to WhatsApp!
- Users require to be 13 years or older and with legal rights to use such a service.
- WhatsApp may choose to charge users for the service.
- Messages that are delivered are not stored on the WhatsApp servers, although media files (audio and video) may be stored on their servers for 30 days--and sometimes more--to improve performance and delivery of such files.
- WhatsApp may, on their own, create favourite lists from your contact list and groups. Communications within these groups can be governed by the user by way of Service Settings in the app for managing contacts, groups and broadcast lists, as well as being able to use the block feature to manage users in the WhatsApp contact list.
- WhatsApp will, at the time of installation, collect mobile device-specific information such as hardware model, operating system information, browser information, IP address, mobile network information including phone number, and device identifiers.
- If the user chooses to delete their account (it is recommended this is done via the in-app ‘Delete my account’ feature,) WhatsApp will delete undelivered messages as well as any other information they ‘no longer need to operate and provide their Services’. Which implies they may retain other user information that they haven’t chosen to list.
The bottomline
After poring through the updated Terms of Services, it is clear that Facebook is changing gears regarding usage of their WhatsApp service -- they’re clearly on a path to making it more compelling for third-party businesses as well as their other group companies to better leverage the power of the world’s most popular messaging service.
The fact that users can opt out of sharing their account information for the ‘improve their ads and products experiences’ part of the usage deal is a good thing (although your account information may still continue to be used by Facebook for other areas in operating their service.)
So for now, if you opt in to these services, here’s what might happen: if you post a picture and talk about of a particularly juicy pizza on Facebook, there’s every chance you could see a special pizza offer in your Whatsapp inbox later in the day. Or if you’ve checked into theater on Facebook you may receive a rebate code in Whatsapp.
But if you choose not to opt into these services, your Whatsapp experience should remain largely unchanged.
For now.
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