After its new privacy policy sparked apprehensions over users’ data, WhatsApp has tried to clear the air over them, in a new blog post. WhatsApp has said it doesn’t share users’ private messages and location with Facebook, its parent company.

Also read: Turkey announces probe into Facebook-WhatsApp data sharing

“With some of the rumors going around, we want to answer some of the common questions we have received. We go to great lengths to build WhatsApp in a way that helps people communicate privately,” the company said in the blog post.

WhatsApp has reiterated that chats on its platform are end-to-end encrypted and neither it nor Facebook can hear calls made over the platform. 

On keeping logs of who a user texts or calls, the company has said, “we believe that keeping these records for two billion users would be both a privacy and security risk and we don’t do it.”

On concerns regarding WhatsApp sharing users’ location data with Facebook, the former said, when a user shares his/her location with someone, it’s end-to-end encrypted, i.e. “no one can see your location except the people you share it with.”

Similarly, the contacts one share over the platform, are end-to-end encrypted. 

WhatsApp had recently updated its privacy policy and users have to accept them by February 8. The new policy dealt with how user data is impacted when there is interaction with a business on the platform. It also provided details on Whatsapp’s integration with its parent company, Facebook.

Users cannot evade accepting the new policies and if they intend to do so, they need to switch to other platforms. ‘Signal‘ has emerged as a popular alternative to WhatsApp since the latter unveiled its policy.

Also read: WhatsApp vs Telegram: 3 features that differentiate the two messaging apps

However, WhatsApp has reminded its users that for greater privacy, they can use its feature of ‘disappearing messages.’ A user has to individually turn on the feature in each personal and group chat. The chat disappears after seven days.