Chennai: WhatsApp has reacted to the recent controversy surrounding it. “To further increase transparency, we updated the privacy policy to describe that going forward businesses can choose to receive secure hosting services from our parent company Facebook to help manage their communications with their customers on WhatsApp.”

Though of course, it remains up to the user whether or not they want to message with a business on WhatsApp.

“The update does not change WhatsApp’s data sharing practices with Facebook and does not impact how people communicate privately with friends or family wherever they are in the world,” it said.

For ardent users of the popular messaging platform WhatsApp, the week gone by was a rather difficult one.

As, the app has come under severe criticism for its new privacy policy, which implicitly states how it processes user data; how businesses can use Facebook hosted services to store and manage their WhatsApp chats; and how WhatsApp partners with Facebook to offer integrations across the company products.

Users will need to accept these updates to continue using WhatsApp, a statement from the platform said.

This announcement has left several users looking for alternative messaging apps, with the most popular ones currently being Signal, Telegram and Arattai.