Home » Technology » User privacy in trouble after Facebook acquired Whatsapp

User privacy in trouble after Facebook acquired Whatsapp

Facebook acquired whatsapp

Facebook acquired Whatsapp in 2014 and many users feared that the privacy of their favorite message sending app will be compromised. But, co-founder of Whatsapp Jan Koum was quick enough to assure users that their privacy will be protected. The messaging app rolled out end to end encryption to ensure users that there will be no breach in privacy.

What happens to User data after Facebook acquired Whatsapp?

Today, it seems that Whatsapp is going against some of the privacy morals it had stuck to for so long. When Facebook acquired Whatsapp the major privacy threat was that Facebook will sell user information to private corporations to tailor advertisements. This isn’t exactly what is going on but something very similar is taking place behind the corporate curtains.

Whatsapp is sharing user numbers and information with Facebook.

This is because Whatsapp wants to venture the idea of businesses reaching out to the audience. It also wants to deliver more relevant advertisements to individual social network by analyzing their Whatsapp data.

 

Another sellout to big corporations

However, Whatsapp has given audience full authority of whether or not they would like their information to be shared with Facebook. In the new privacy policy update, which Whatsapp has done after four years, users can scroll down and opt out of whether or not they want their data shared. According to the new privacy policy that Whatsapp updated today users can go to their “Settings” option and uncheck the clause which allows data share with Facebook.

It should be kept in mind that this new privacy policy only allows Whatsapp to share user number with Facebook so that they can better alter advertisements according to geographical location. It does not mean that Whatsapp will allow Facebook to read users text messages because they are still protected through end to end encryption.

Whatsapp has given more relevant information on their blog.

Read more about privacy here: People tend to ignore security warnings 90% of the time

 

source: verge

Image via Spectrose