WhatsApp is currently haemorrhaging users as people abandon the messaging platform in favour of Signal, Telegram, and even in some cases, old favourites like Viber and ICQ.
A report by analytics firm App Annie and shared with the UK government's Home Affairs Committee found that Telegram and Signal - two competing messaging apps to WhatsApp - gained some 32.5 million users worldwide over the first three weeks of this year.
Here in Ireland, Signal is currently in third place on the Google Play Store, while Telegram is currently sixth. WhatsApp, meanwhile, has fallen to 17th place in the Top Charts. The cause of the exodus from WhatsApp is most likely due to an update in the app's terms and conditions.
Under the new privacy policy, WhatsApp would have the ability to share some of the data it collects with the wider group of companies that Facebook operates. This would include the user's phone number, any phone numbers stored in their address book, a record of when the user was last online, as well as diagnostic data.
The new privacy policy has been heavily criticised, however WhatsApp - which is owned by Facebook - claims that there are no changes to their data sharing with Facebook anywhere in the world. Such was the furore surrounding the privacy policy change that WhatsApp have now delayed implementing their new privacy policy until May 15th of this year.
