WhatsApp takes out front page ads to reassure users about privacy policy

'WhatsApp protects and respects your privacy' - reads the copy of the full page ads that appeared in leading national newspapers.

WhatsApp's new privacy policy has been the topic of conversation for approximately a week now. What started off as a notification of the policy change to users escalated since users were concerned that WhatsApp's parent company, Facebook could access confidential data relating to chats, GPS locations and transactions.

The ad tries to encapsulate what the new policy does and does not do. The copy is split into two columns - What has changed and what hasn't changed with the new policy.

Quite a few people have tweeted about this print ad and adman (and CEO of agency Thinkstr) Satbir Singh pointed out that the medium they chose to advertise on makes a difference, since WhatsApp has been accused of being a medium to spread fake news on, in the past.

When you want to say ‘trust me’ you don’t use social media like, umm, WhatsApp. You use print. pic.twitter.com/J206xNikHV

— Satbir Singh (@thesatbir) January 13, 2021

The terms of the new policy are simple - if a user does not agree to use them, they will not be able to continue using the app. As a result, rival encrypted messaging apps Telegram and Signal have seen an increase in results in the past few days.

A CNBC TV-18 report states that Signal saw approximately 7.5 million installs globally through the Apple App Store and Google Play store between 06 January and 10 January. Meanwhile Telegram saw 5.6 million downloads globally from Wednesday through Sunday (10 January).

Vidisha Chatterjee the communications director, India at WhatsApp took to LinkedIn to post a series of creatives to assure users that they can continue trusting WhatsApp for the following reasons. These points have also been addressed in WhatsApp's official blog post.

Also Read: WhatsApp responds to concerns about privacy policy update