Your rights on Whatsapp

Your rights on Whatsapp

The app wants to implement group invitations

   Everything you say in a WhatsApp group can be used against you, but you also have the right to a lawyer. It sounds like a phrase, but it is totally true. In Spain there are already several sentences that justify the dismissal for insults in Mark Zuckerberg's famous instant messenger application.

However, lawyers and lawyers remind that "the privacy of a WhatsApp group is similar to that of a telephone conversation or an email". Although, they add that "if one of the participants in the conversation is the one who makes it public, they can be used as an argument to punish the employee ".

To this equation, the experts add a question. Is it legal to share a screenshot of a conversation on WhatsApp? The answer: it depends. The action is usually very common, however if the conversation of a third party may be incurring a crime of revealing secrets and if it is done on social networks it can be even worse.

Run away from groups
One of the great fears of WhatsApp are the groups. Group of work, friends, classmates, work, best friends, last birthdays, meetings ... and strangers.

As explained by WaBetaInfo, the engineers of the instant messaging app are working on a function to prevent you from being added to groups without your prior consent. With this tool would prevent the famous case of the Chinese restaurant in Murcia Wen Zhou who mistakenly added more than 200 contacts to a group to announce the change of phone number of the premises.

It is also known the case of Boecillo City Council (Valladolid), reported by one of the neighbors included in a WhatsApp group that purported to be a distribution list. These two actions are contrary to the LOPD and therefore to the RGPD . In the case of Valladolid, the Spanish Agency for Data Protection considered that it was a serious infraction.

These actions allow anyone in the group to access the phone numbers of strangers. Thus, according to WaBetaInfo, the new function will restrict the possibility of adding people to groups and will be able to put several levels of openness to this modality.

The invitation will be received in the case of choosing «Contacts» or «Nobody». They will be active for 72 hours after this time, the invitation will expire.

Judicial proof?
Several magistrates have already accepted conversations on the platform in legal proceedings, but others have rejected it because of possible manipulations of them. On all occasions, whether they are accepted or rejected, the judges demand the qualification of the same and that is where the problem arises.

So that the expert can demonstrate the truth of the conversation, he has to access the backup copies of both parties and certify sending and receiving. But, if the users do not have copies and WhatsApp does not store the messages.