No, despite the allegations of this message forwarded by a good friend, WhatsApp will not soon become chargeable.
One of the most essential apps on your smartphone just doesn't want to be completely free anymore.
The famous WhatsApp messaging application therefore asks its nearly two billion users to agree to new terms of use.
Objective: to allow him to share from next February 8 more personal data with his Facebook parent company.
Users who decline will no longer be able to access their account and discussion groups.
WhatsApp defends itself by specifying that this only concerns business accounts in Europe.
But what will this change for you?
The Parisian deciphers this change of course which makes noise.
What should you do before February 8?
Until now, the user could voluntarily share their personal data, such as their phone number or full name.
This will now be an obligation.
A notification, which you may have already received, indeed lets you know: you have just under a month to comply with the new WhatsApp rules.
If you do not agree to these terms of use, your account will be suspended, until you change your mind.
One clarification, however: your account and the backup of private conversations will not be purely deleted but put in brackets.
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Why is WhatsApp making this update?
Until then quite spared by the collection of personal data, WhatsApp instant messaging takes a new turn so that Facebook finally amortizes its investment of several billion dollars during the takeover in 2014.
In its terms of use updated at the end of January, WhatsApp is preparing the implementation of changes decided on last fall to facilitate companies' access to the communication tool and in particular to facilitate purchase directly from a conversation.
What data will they have access to?
Deployed on a planetary scale, the changes made therefore correspond to a new commercial strategy.
The new global rules provide for easier sharing of personal data - such as phone number, name or IP address to geolocate - with other entities of the Facebook group such as the social network of the same name or Instagram, which have done so. for years of advertising targeting a business model.
The French user is, on paper, however better off.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) indeed regulates the collection of data from European citizens within a strict framework that excludes commercial reuse.
A spokesperson insisted on extinguishing the outbreak of controversy in France: “WhatsApp does not share European user data with Facebook in order to improve the group's advertisements or commercial products.
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They will therefore only be used to develop the features offered to WhatsApp Business professional accounts, according to Facebook France.
Is it really legal?
It is a small "yes" that emerges from the first analyzes.
The update respects the general framework of the GDPR and the notion of user consent but flirts with the red line and Facebook could expose itself to complaints and, in the longer term, to a procedure before the European authorities.
"If the only way to refuse this modification is to stop using WhatsApp, then consent is forced and the processing of personal data is illegal," denounces Arthur Messaud, lawyer for the association for the defense of Internet users La Squaring the net.
Even if WhatsApp retrieves a minimum of personal data, the messages are still protected by an encryption that guarantees privacy.
A logic, above all economic, can also reassure: analyzing all your private conversations would overheat any tool and would be expensive for a random efficiency.
What are the alternatives ?
If you decide to quit WhatsApp, there are a plethora of other messaging services that operate similarly but are more privacy-friendly.
The historical competitors are Viber (Rakuten group), Telegram or the Chinese app WeChat.
Propelled to the top of downloads after the Facebook ads and dubbed by Elon Musk or Edward Snowden, the Signal app is popular thanks to the most advanced data encryption technology on the market.
Faced with an influx of new users that saturated its servers at the end of the last week, Signal even posted a tutorial to help them easily import their group conversations from another messaging app.
More confidential, the French application Olvid boasts of being the most secure in the world and has been validated by cybersecurity experts from the National Agency for the Security of Information Systems (Anssi).
Be careful, however: before leaving WhatsApp for good, make sure that your tribes follow you on the new communication channels.
Despite the various scandals for several years, the exodus of Facebook users has never been massive.