The company says Facebook will employ the phone number internally to better identify WhatsApp users on Facebook, so it can recommend friends or show targeted advertising.
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If you are a WhatsApp user and do not want to share your account information with Facebook, you can take the following steps to prevent it. “Existing users who accept our updated Terms and Privacy Policy will have an additional 30 days to make this choice by going to Settings Account”.
But in case you still not happy and don’t want WhatsApp to share your number with Facebook, you have 30 days to opt out.
Two years after WhatsApp was bought by Facebook for what ended up being almost $22 billion and the messaging app’s founder vowed the deal wouldn’t “change its values” surrounding user privacy, WhatsApp has updated its privacy policy.
As we announced earlier this year, we want to explore ways for you to communicate with businesses that matter to you too, while still giving you an experience without third-party banner ads and spam. Having access to a person’s WhatsApp number will allow Facebook to offer better friend suggestions-presumably based on contacts-and better target ads to users. WhatsApp has finally fallen to the lure of money and is loosening some of its own restrictions, and has announced it will begin sharing a limited amount of user data – including individuals’ phone numbers – with parent company Facebook.
Please note that, while this will stop your account information being used to improve these ad services, other user data is still shared between WhatsApp and Facebook. “Not WhatsApp, not Facebook, nor anyone else”, the company said in a blogpost.
You probably already hit the “agree” button without bothering to see if there was something to uncheck.
Whatsapp is still a popular messaging app on Windows Phone, and we’ll see if these changes generate some backlash among the community of users. They also explain that we are part of the Facebook family of companies.
This will help Facebook with advertisement targeting, but it will also give the social network more ways to track you around the web.
That’s it! By doing this, you will effectively keep your WhatsApp data private from Facebook. An example of that is the app being temporarily banned in Brazil because of WhatsApp’s refusal to release data to the government.
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WhatsApp, however, sought to reassure users by saying that it would not sell, share, or give users’ phone numbers to advertisers.
