As planned, the new WhatsApp terms have already come into force. For the past few months, the Meta messaging service has been notifying users to accept new terms, which have been updated to comply with European Union regulations. Below we will examine these new conditions, what they mean and how they affect us.

European regulations? Yes, the already known Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA). These regulations have disrupted the technology landscape and enabled, for example, Apple to support third-party stores and apps like WhatsApp to be interoperable. Actually, this is one of the big changes.

Change #1: interoperability. In fact, the first innovation is interoperability. As of today, April 11, WhatsApp must be interoperable, that is, it must be able to be used with other messaging applications. This means it will be possible to talk to Telegram users from WhatsApp. That’s the idea, but the reality is that no apps are compatible at the moment. Technically it is possible but there is no other option.

We know that chats from third-party applications will appear in their own section within the main chat screen, thus being separated from WhatsApp-WhatsApp conversations. We should point out that applications that send us messages do not need to have the same end-to-end encryption as WhatsApp.

Third party chats on WhatsApp | Image: Xataka

Change number 2: minimum age. Until now, the minimum age to use WhatsApp was 16. It has now been 13 years with new conditions. That’s the theory, the reality is that WhatsApp hasn’t detailed how it plans to verify users’ age.

Change number 3: data transfer. The third and final change is related to information transfer. WhatsApp needs to transfer data internationally to allow us to talk to people around the world, for example. This does not affect end-to-end encryption in any way, which will continue to work as before.

To protect such information, WhatsApp relies on adequacy decisions, that is, “decisions of the European Commission in which it has recognized that certain countries and territories outside the European Economic Area guarantee an adequate level of protection for personal information”; EU-US data privacy framework and “standard contractual clauses” approved by the European Commission “for transfers to third-party interoperable messaging services and to the United States, the United Kingdom and Singapore.”

I do not want to accept the terms. If you continue to use WhatsApp from today (April 11), you will have accepted these terms. If you don’t, WhatsApp links to this page where they explain how to request your account information and delete your account. In other words: continuing to use WhatsApp is tantamount to accepting these conditions, which in reality do not represent major changes in daily experience.

Image | Xataka

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