Facebook’s main app will be able to use the phone number registered with WhatsApp to tell when a smartphone owner has installed both – as well as better targeting adverts and improve friend suggestions.
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WhatsApp is set to allow companies message you. Whether it’s hearing from your bank about a potentially fraudulent transaction, or getting notified by an airline about a delayed flight, many of us get this information elsewhere, including in text messages and phone calls.
If you want to carry on using the app, you can’t opt out of the Facebook connection feature, as the update of terms and privacy policy is compulsory, WhatsApp said. WhatsApp breaks down how to do this on their website.
This is the first update that the terms and privacy policy gets in four years.
In a significant development, WhatsApp today announced it will integrate with other “businesses” to offer customised solutions to its billion plus users.
Privacy advocates had raised concerns that Facebook would start mining WhatsApp accounts for data.
The new update will also positively affect Facebook’s Custom Audience ad platform for businesses, by displaying more “relevant ads” by pulling data for different phone numbers associated with the two services. Those who use Facebook and are in the contact database uploaded by the advertiser will then be shown the targeted ads’.
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Also written into the new policy is permission for WhatsApp to share data, including your phone number, with its parent company Facebook. The key thing, from where we stand, is that from now on WhatsApp will straight up share your data with Zuckerberg and Co. Other than that, WhatsApp’s blog post of FAQ doesn’t say any more than “some information”, which is a little vague for my liking. But it might be a sign that the panic that set in with many people when Facebook bought WhatsApp – that private information and messages are going to be used for ads, which is Facebook’s primary business.
