In the last few days, people have raised concerns over Whatsapp's New Privacy Policy, released on the 4th of January. Though there are changes to the list of parties that will now have access to user's data, it has been exaggerated a lot creating a panic among the users.

Let us look at what exactly has changed in this new Privacy Policy and whether we should be concerned about our chats and private information, being shared with other companies or not.

What information does WhatsApp Collect?

Shocked?? Well, don't be these are just the standard information that any major tech service provider collects. The good news is there is no additional data, that is getting collected after the new privacy policy came into effect. But then why is there so much chaos?

While no additional data is collected, the accessibility rights, over the data changed with the new Privacy Policy. With the new Privacy Policy, user data except for messages will now be accessible to parent company Facebook and all its sister companies like Instagram.

Although Whatsapp itself does not show ads on its app, the data WhatsApp collects might be used for behavioural analysis providing targeted ads on other platforms like Facebook and Instagram.

Users dissatisfied with this change are switching to Signal. Signal is another messaging app that provides free and end-to-end encrypted messaging, and which has gained a popularity push in light of the new WhatsApp policy. WhatsApp uses Signal’s protocol for its encryption. The interesting fact is, Signal is not owned by any corporation and is run by a nonprofit.

Will Signal be able to support the massive number of users switching out of Whatsapp while still being free? Time will tell.

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