Facebook-Owned Mobile Messaging Application WhatsApp Adds End To End Encryption (Photo : Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
When WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook in 2014, the messaging service's co-founder, Jan Koum promised its millions of users that the deal will not affect their digital privacy. However, report says that the messaging service will be sharing some of the members' information to social media giant.
On a blog post in 2014, Koum wrote that the service does not know the user's birthday or home address. None of the information has ever been collected and saved by WhatsApp and they have no plans to change that, New York Times reported.
But now, after two years, WhatsApp will be sharing some data with Facebook, a move that will definitely annoy most of its users. The messaging service will share its users' phone number and analytics data to Facebook for the first time as the social media giant tries to coordinate information across its collection of business.
"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," WhatsApp said in a blog post announcing the changes to its privacy policy.
Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Bureau of Consumer Protection sent a letter to the companies after the announcement of Facebook that it will acquire WhatsApp in 2014. This is to warn them to honor what they had promised to consumers or they will be investigated for unfair trade practices.
A part of the letter said that if the companies choose to change how they collect use, and share newly-collected WhatsApp data, FTC recommends them to offer the consumers an opportunity to opt out of some changes or make it clear to the consumers that they can choose to stop using WhatsApp service, as reported by Fortune.
WhatsApp users are going to have an option to block Facebook from using their data for advertising. However, they cannot block Facebook from internally linking the accounts to know who its users are possibly, know about who are in their contacts.
WhatsApp has been acquired by Facebook for $22 billion but it has not generated any real revenue for the company. This makes the data integration plan an important move for Facebook.
