The company said the change would allow Facebook to target advertising at WhatsApp users who are also on the social media platform, and help WhatsApp fight spam on its service.
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WhatsApp users could now get messages direct from businesses after the instant messaging app changed its privacy rules.
Messaging giant WhatsApp has announced a big change to its privacy policy and says it would start sharing some user data -including your phone number- with parent company Facebook. That doesn’t mean, however, that WhatsApp will now be littered with third-party banner ads.
After 2014, when the messaging service was acquired by Facebook, most users showed their concern regarding the confidentiality policy. Facebook bought WhatsApp for $19 billion, by far its largest acquisition ever, and had to start making use of its data sooner or later to make that money back.
In its FAQs, while answering the questiong, ‘Will there be ads on Whatsapp now?’ the company said that you may receive flight status information for upcoming travel, a receipt for something you purchased, or a notification when a delivery will be made. “For example, if you sign up to your local flower shop’s mailing list using the same mobile phone number that you use for your WhatsApp account, and they decide to advertise on Facebook, you may see their ads on Facebook”, the spokesperson explained.
“We won’t post or share your WhatsApp number with others, including on Facebook, and we still won’t sell, share, or give your phone number to advertisers”. “We want to test these features in the next several months, but need to update our terms and privacy policy to do so”, WhatsApp said in the blogpost.
WhatsApp is giving users a limited time to opt out of sharing their information with Facebook, although they must take the extra step of unchecking a box to do so. The app will begin sharing some of its data and phone numbers with the social network.
WhatsApp phone numbers are valuable to Facebook.
The coordination of accounts may draw fire from privacy advocates.
The WhatsApp blog post tried to assure users that their encrypted messages on the WhatsApp platform will stay private, even from Facebook. WhatsApp promises that encryption will remain, so neither WhatsApp nor Facebook would be able to use message content for advertising purposes.
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In addition to tapping into WhatsApp data for better ad targeting, WhatsApp also updated its policy to pave the way for users to communicate with businesses.
