WhatsApp’s new privacy policy notes that when users rely on “third-party services or other Facebook Company Products that are integrated with our Services, those third-party services may receive information about what you or others share with them.”
In 2019, CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about his cross-platform vision across Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp — he called it “interoperability”. The main aim of this deeper integration is to provide users with a better experience, in terms of security and other services like target marketing and much more.
How private is WhatsApp? Is it mandatory to accept the new privacy policy by the media giant? And, should you look for the relevant alternatives?
Interoperability deals with the concept of freely sharing resources/information between two systems or machines. It can mean sharing data using any software or hardware, and sometimes using Local Area Networks (LANs) or Wide Area Networks (WANs) for the exchange of resources.
With the implementation of Interoperability among the products offered by the parent company Facebook, the businesses can extract benefits in terms of revenue, increased customer engagement & easy segmentation, efficient user reach, and so on.
On the other side, this may lead to some setbacks like the loss of privacy through personal data including significant information like user location, buying behavior, transaction details & nature, etc. While WhatsApp says it will “clearly label conversations with businesses that are choosing to use hosting services from Facebook”, this policy will impact & may use the data or details that you’ve opted to share with a business using the platform.
So, to what extent does data share matter or why is it alarming the end-users? Well, the answer to this can be tricky, meaning that understanding the purpose & how you can use the feature to restrict yourself from sharing unnecessary detail while continuing the usage of WhatsApp is more important than switching to an alternative. You may try to analyze and find an option with popular features like easy access, real-time messaging, no hidden cost, etc.
Apart from what all is covered under the updated privacy policy of WhatsApp & the kind of users they’re target, self-monitoring, timely reviews, and taking corrective action based on the individual requirement is extremely essential to combat any risk. It will be good idea to adopt risk management process to carefully decide and take appropriate action .
The entire role of the risk management process is to ensure that any organization or individual should identify potential risks beforehand. Analyse same, rank based on their risk appetite and try to put measure to bring the risk within the reasonable risk appetite level. This require careful analysis, looking at alternative , implementing corrective action if required and regular measuring and monitoring impact .Therefore, the decision making should be dependent on the degree of risk and not a generalized perception!
Co-author: Nidhi Mishra
