WhatsApp Clarifies its Privacy Policy

WhatsApp had recently faced a major security crisis when more than 4,000 links inviting people to join private groups were indexed on Google, suggesting a massive data breach and allowing anyone to join these groups.

Amid widespread outrage over the leak of WhatsApp's private group chats on search engines, the Facebook-owned messaging service issued a clarification on Tuesday, saying that private messages shared on the platform are "NOT shared" with Facebook.

"We want to address some rumours and be 100% clear, we continue to protect your private messages with end-to-end encryption," WhatsApp said in a statement.

Listing what information is shared and not shared with Facebook, it read:

• WhatsApp cannot see your private messages or listen to your calls and neither can Facebook
• WhatsApp keeps logs of who everyone is texting or calling
• WhatsApp can't see your shared location and neither can Facebook
• WhatsApp don't share your contacts with Facebook
• WhatsApp groups remain private
• You can set your messages to disappear
• You can download your data.

Addressing the increased speculation around the privacy of group chats, WhatsApp further said: "We do not share this information with Facebook for advertisements. Again, these private chats are end-to-end encrypted, so we cannot see their content. ". He also shared a link to WhatsApp's privacy policy for users to get the authentic information.

The clarification comes a day after Google indexed the invitation links to WhatsApp private group chats, which means anyone can join multiple private chat groups with a simple search. This is the second time that private chats have allegedly been leaked from the messaging app.

WhatsApp had recently faced a major security crisis when more than 4,000 links inviting people to join private groups were indexed on Google, suggesting a massive data breach and allowing anyone to join these groups.

WhatsApp is changing its privacy policy, and you need to "agree and agree" if you plan to continue using the application after February 8th. WhatsApp's updated policy says that you can share your information with your family of companies to facilitate, support and integrate activities and improve services.