For South African officials, there is no question that the most used messaging applications in the world share their users’ data with their parent company, Facebook.

They have expressed their opposition to WhatsApp’s plans to change WhatsApp’s plans to share their data, arguing that they violate South African law. They thus make South Africa the first country on the continent to adopt this hostile attitude towards Mark Zuckerberg’s company and its subsidiary.
“Without prior authorization of the Information Regulator (IR), WhatsApp processes its users little contact information from any other person for the purpose for which that number was specifically provided when it was registered” , This agency indicated in a press release.

Following the rush of WhatsApp users globally against such a project in January last year, it is around governments to take measures so that the personal data of their citizens does not end up in the hands of partner companies for advertising purposes.

When the project came out last January, several million users of the two billion WhatsApp account decided to seamlessly migrate to competing applications, but not for commercial purposes such as Signal or Telegram. It was then that the Facebook group retreated to give until next May before implementing it on its users.