FG Asks Nigerians To Decline WhatsApp Privacy Terms

• The agency urged Nigerians to explore other messaging platforms beyond Whatsapp

The federal government has made known its reservations concerning popular instant messaging app, WhatsApp, privacy policy.

The government concerns was contained in a statement titled ‘Whatsapp privacy policy changes: Implication for Nigerian users.’ and issued by the National Information Technology Development.

In the statement signed by the agency’s Head of Corporate Affairs and External Relations at the agency, Hadiza Umar, the government said Nigerians reserved the right to decide whether they wanted to grant WhatsApp unfettered access to their private information.

“The National Information Technology Development Agency under Section 6 (f) of the NITDA Act 2007 wishes to provide this advisory to Nigerians to address Nigerian concerns on changes to Whatsapp Terms of Service and Privacy Policy which took effect on May 15, 2021,” it said.

“The Nigeria Data Protection Regulation (NDPR) recognises consent (a clear, unambiguous expression of privacy terms communicated by the controller and accepted by the Data Subject) as one of the lawful basis for data processing. Acceptance of the new privacy policy and terms of use implies that user data would now be shared with Facebook and other third parties,”

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The agency urged Nigerians to explore other messaging platforms beyond Whatsapp and advised that sharing sensitive personal information on private messaging and social media platforms be limited, given WhatsApps affiliation to Facebook and its history with user data sharing.

The agency added that it would continue engaging with Facebook as they “have given them our opinion on areas to improve compliance with the NDPR. We have also raised concerns as to the marked difference between the privacy standard applicable in Europe, under the GDPR and the rest of the world.”

Since 2016, WhatsApp’s privacy policies have permitted the application to share metadata such as user phone numbers, device information, and location, among others, with Facebook involved in legal tussles over privacy concerns.