To quit or not to quit? The big dilemma for WhatsApp users

Gloria Grace, 23, doesn’t intend to leave WhatsApp for other platforms despite the firm having come up with new terms and conditions. She admits that she will eventually accept the terms to continue using the platform. “I’m just buying time.’’

Two weeks ago, WhatsApp, a subsidiary of Facebook, started sending out notifications to clients to announce change of its terms of use. Users have until February 8 to accept the updated terms that take away their right to privacy while giving the platform more leeway to share user data with third parties.

Failure to assent to the terms will see users’ accounts frozen. It’s either WhatsApp’s way or the highway.

The controversial move has outraged WhatsApp’s two billion users globally who rely on the platform to communicate with family, friends and for work, but who suddenly find themselves cornered.

The announcement has also awakened the debate on how much power tech giants wield amid growing concerns of bold intrusion into users’ privacy.

For years, WhatsApp has been encrypting conversations through various integrated technologies, allowing only the user to see them.

‘‘Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA,’’ reads a statement in the company’s terms of use. The new terms, however, erode this privacy.

Data expert George Njoroge crystallises the development.

Share data

“Facebook will now have complete access to all your data on WhatsApp,’’ warns the CEO of East Data Handlers. ‘‘This is unlike in the past when you had the option not to share your data with Facebook,’’

Besides Facebook, WhatsApp works with other third parties ‘‘to improve our services and offerings’’ and ‘‘to distribute our apps, provide our infrastructure and delivery’’.

Kenya passed the Data Protection Act in 2019. But to what extent does it offer a shield to users’ privacy rights? What loopholes exist? Njoroge says the law falls short.

‘‘The law only provides protection against intrusion of communication,’’ Njoroge says.

He adds that the law prohibits disclosure of user information with third parties, except when required by law.

A third party can also acquire personal information when ‘‘the third party Data Processing Agreement has been approved and signed by the Data Controller and the Data Processor’’.  Even so, the owner of this data must be aware.

If you ever wonder what tech companies do with the personal information you share with them, Njoroge has an answer: they sell it. This is called surveillance capitalism.

‘‘The primary source of revenue for tech companies is sale of user information to advertisers,’’ he says adding that this is done through tracking user traffic. ‘‘The companies are, essentially, giant databases filled with user information that can be mined and sold for a profit,’’ he explains.

This doesn’t concern Grace in the least. ‘‘I can’t stop them from using it if they wanted to,’’ she says resignedly.

Might you be ceding your privacy rights unknowingly by using tech product? Njoroge says accepting privacy and policy agreements from software applications without reading and understanding them is where most users err.

‘‘When you grant permission to mobile applications to access, collect, store and use your sensitive personal information –phone number, contacts, precise location and messages – you surrender your privacy to them,’’ Njoroge says.

Even that glossy photo that you post innocently on social media reveals much more about you than the occasion.

Mobile apps

Tech companies and mobile apps developers also employ skullduggery to fetch users’ information. Data scientist Odanga Madung notes that the design of most app’s privacy policy documents is deliberately curated in a way that discourages the user to read them.

They are often bulky, agonisingly long and written in a font that’s not appealing to the eye. Google’s privacy policy document, for instance, is more than 20 pages long, with multiple links that soon tire out the reader.

‘‘Warnings on what information the companies are fetching aren’t presented as warnings. Few users read the terms,’’ Odanga says, noting that users simply accept them, thus surrendering their rights.

Surveillance capitalism, Odanga adds, is anchored on unethical practice and that this business model is headed for a crash following growing concerns among users and regulators.

Odanga argues that this is also a question of fair competition. ‘‘Tech companies have accrued so much power, and with no competition, users often have no alternative which is why they stay put,’’ he says.

For millions of users, having to choose between ceding their privacy rights or exiting platform puts them between a rock and a hard place.

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