In 2014 WhatsApp, the popular mobile messaging platform was purchased for $19 billion by the social media behemoth, Facebook. There were questions at the time of the deal as to how Facebook would recoup its investment, senior management were eager to reiterate their desire to keep the WhatsApp advert free?
While WhatsApp has remained an autonomous unit under the Facebook umbrella they do admit to looking for new sources of revenue. Their latest policy change is designed to allow businesses to connect directly with WhatsApp users such as banks and airlines. That privilege will at some point be extended to other arenas.
As per the new agreement, WhatsApp has agreed to begin sharing select user data with its parent company. That includes people’s phone numbers:
“By connecting your phone number with Facebook's systems, Facebook can offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them”The new privacy policy allows WhatsApp to directly integrate some user data with the social network. WhatsApp’s update describes this as “improving your Facebook ads and products experiences.” Facebook will have a broader image of users’ private lives and internet usage – including phone number, WhatsApp contact list, the type of device used as well as operating system.
Such a comprehensive view of online communication, activity, affiliations and habits will further errode any privacy that user believe
Those who use both WhatsApp and Facebook will give Facebook access to several pieces of your WhatsApp information, including WhatsApp phone number, contact list, and usage data – time of WhatsApp connection, device used and the operating system of the user.
Sharing metadata of this manner further empowers Facebook, a company that already has a significant hold over its users. The new agreement hands them an enhanced view of users’ online communication activities, affiliations, habits, and runs the risk of making private WhatsApp contacts into more public Facebook connections. With this new data Facebook may be tempted to suggest WhatsApp contacts as Facebook friends. Facebook will of course use the data to show “more relevant” ads.
Facebook themselves claim that they will use any such data to help ‘fight spam’ and that the connection that users will have with their banks will be a useful tool in the fight against fraudulent transactions. Airlines will also be able to warn customers about delays.
The decision has prompted the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the The Center for Digital Democracy to file a joint complaint with the America’s Federal Trade Commission against Whatsapp - https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=https%3A%2F%2Fepic.org%2Fprivacy%2Fftc%2Fwhatsapp%2FEPIC-CDD-FTC-WhatsApp-Complaint-2016.pdf
For those looking for a way to avoid or at least limit Facebook’s access to their lives:
How
to turn off Facebook’s spying mechanism:
Alternatively
readers might wish to use one of the growing number of competing
mobile messenger services.
Consider
using wickr:
Or
Threema:
Signal:
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