WhatsApp stated that sharing account information with Facebook and the Facebook family of companies allows it to “coordinate more and improve experiences across our services”.
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WhatsApp has earned the respect of many users by dedicating itself to privacy, including utilizing end-to-end encryption for messages sent on the service.
While speaking about the privacy, the company mentioned in a blogpost that the users’ encrypted messages stay private and no-one else can read them.
WhatsApp said users who signed up as of August 25 have a 30-day window to opt out of sharing some account data with Facebook after accepting the new terms of service.
The policy change is likely to upset some users who trusted WhatsApp to keep their data as private as possible – a principle that WhatsApp founder and CEO Jan Koum promised to abide by shortly after getting acquired by Facebook.
The spokesperson said the focus will remain on ensuring that users are not spammed and that users can block such messages adding that “WhatsApp will continue to be ad-free”. As always, we look forward to your feedback and thank you for using WhatsApp. But it does have access to phone numbers – and now Facebook does too.
If you already accepted the new Terms, you can still opt out for a period of time by going to Settings – Account – Share my Account Info.
After all, at some point Facebook needs to start recouping the $19 billion it dropped on WhatsApp. “You can opt out of sharing information from WhatsApp to Facebook for any sort of products or ad experience on Facebook”, the WhatsApp spokesperson said”.
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WhatsApp says that this information will be used to improve the platform and help reduce spam. Facebook says it doesn’t give out users’ information to advertisers. In fact, Facebook will not use user’s WhatsApp messages for any objective other than to assist us in operating and providing our services. Privacy will surely win the day on this one however, if it were to come to the Facebook and WhatsApp boardroom table.
