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Whoever opened the messenger app WhatsApp on Thursday was greeted with a warning message: “WhatsApp is updating its terms of use and its data protection guidelines” - the new conditions for Germany's most popular messenger app on the smartphone are to come from February 8th.
Anyone who does not agree should no longer be able to use the app from the deadline.
The changes come globally - in particular, how the Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp processes user data should be updated.
Furthermore, companies and Facebook advertisers are to open, manage and save their own WhatsApp chats with users using new Facebook tools.
Immediately after the innovation was published, a heated debate broke out on social networks among users, who view the changes with concern.
Data protection activist Johannes Caspar is amazed at the Facebook push
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Various German media also report that with the changes to the terms of use, WhatsApp can now share German user data with the services of the parent company Facebook and even pass it on to their advertising customers.
Data protectionists such as the Hamburg data protection officer Johannes Caspar warned at WELT's request that Facebook could now operate “a largely unrestricted exchange of data, especially between WhatsApp and Facebook”, even for marketing purposes.
"It is surprising that after the GDPR came into force, the Facebook group is now intensifying its plans to exchange data," Caspar wrote in a statement.
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Caspar's authority had already banned data exchange between Facebook and the group subsidiary for German users in the past, but Facebook's complaints failed.
But Facebook came forward with its own statement: The change to the data protection directive applies in this form worldwide, but not for users in the European Union.
The EU Commission's competition watchdogs had already banned Facebook from exchanging data when purchasing WhatsApp.
Niamh Sweeney, director of policy at WhatsApp in Europe and Asia, writes via Twitter: Reports to the contrary are wrong.
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"The terms of use for Europe still apply," writes Sweeney, referring to this passage: "Currently, Facebook does not use your WhatsApp account information to improve your product experience on Facebook or to show you more interesting Facebook ads." continue to change nothing.
In the USA in particular, this is different, where WhatsApp can be approved by users to make appropriate changes to the terms of use.
This is remarkable against the background that the competition watchdog of the US government, the Federal Trade Commission, is investigating Facebook because of the cooperation between WhatsApp and Facebook - and expressly sees reversing the merger as an option.
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