WhatsApp is one of the most popular mobile messaging applications. It allows users to send free messages, videos, photos, and communicate via voice and video calling. The latest version of the app has more than 300 billion downloads.
When a user installs WhatsApp on his smartphone, he is asked to allow a few permissions that WhatsApp requests for access to the user’s phone number and contact list. According to some cyber experts, sharing such information with third-party applications can make users susceptible to scam. However, WhatsApp has introduced many policies to counter and prevent such incidents.
In particular, it has been the new WhatsApp video calling ersion, which has received a lot of backlash due to the misinterpretation of the information given out during the release of this new update.
Let’s see how WhatsApp challenged the troll and come out clean for its new video calling version.
The New WhatsApp video calling version and truths
The new policy update has mentioned data sharing with Facebook; however, it failed to give crucial details that the users wanted, which resulted in giving rise to a lot of false information that has been used against WhatsApp and has even encouraged users to switch to other applications such as Signal and Telegram.
Although the new policy does not change how WhatsApp deals with the data exchanged in personal chats, however, a few additions have been made in the overall privacy policy, such as sharing an approximate location through your IP address to Facebook. According to the updated policy, “WhatsApp does not retain your messages in the ordinary course of providing the Services to you. Instead, your messages are stored on your device and not typically stored on the servers. Once your messages are delivered, they are deleted from the servers”.
The content that a user might have shared with his family, friends, acquaintances, or business over WhatsApp, including pictures, videos, audio files, and messages, remain private to the people the user shares them with, and are a part of their chat history only. These files and messages are only temporarily stored in their servers till the information has reached the receiving party, ensuring efficient delivery.
It is also crucial to note at this point that WhatsApp does not record or listen to the audio or/and video calls that are made over WhatsApp between two or more parties.
