Answering your questions about WhatsApp’s Privacy Policy - We recently updated our Privacy Policy and we have received many thoughtful questions. With some of the rumors going around, we want to answer some of the common questions we have received. We go to great lengths to build WhatsApp in a way that helps people communicate privately. We want to be clear that the policy update does not affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family in any way. The changes are related to optional business features on WhatsApp, and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data.
  • ufra
    6•3 years ago

    No comment on FB latest public realations The founder of Whatsapp has provided some pretty good inside baseball from his dealings with their goals to exploit WA user data via metadata linking. FB maybe can’t read your messages (unless someone sends them to a moderator via new Report functionality) but they do use metadata to exploit users.

    In perhaps the most telling tidbit of the interview, Acton reveals that even before the WhatsApp acquisition had been cleared he was carefully coached by Facebook to tell European regulators it would be “really difficult” for it to combine WhatsApp and Facebook user data.

    “I was coached to explain that it would be really difficult to merge or blend data between the two systems,” Acton said.

    An ‘impossible conjoining’ that Facebook subsequently, miraculously went on to achieve, just two years later, which later earned it a $122M fine from the European Commission for providing incorrect or misleading information on the original filing. (Facebook has maintained that unintentional “errors” were to blame.)

    After the acquisition had been cleared Acton said he later learned that elsewhere in Facebook there were indeed “plans and technologies to blend data” between the two services — and that specifically it could use the 128-bit string of numbers assigned to each phone to connect WhatsApp and Facebook user accounts.

    Phone-number matching is another method used to link accounts — and sharing WhatsApp users’ phone numbers with the parent group was a change pushed onto users via the 2016 update to WhatsApp’s terms and conditions.

    (Though Facebook’s linking of WhatsApp and Facebook accounts for ad targeting purposes remains suspended in Europe, after regulatory push-back.)

    Acton said Facebook also sought “broader rights” to WhatsApp users data under the new terms of service — and claims he and Koum pushed back and reached a compromise with Facebook management.

    The ‘compromise’ being that the clause about ‘no ads’ would remain — but Facebook would get to link accounts to power friend suggestions on Facebook and to offer its advertising partners better targets for ads on Facebook. So really they just bought themselves (and their users) a bit more time.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/26/whatsapp-founder-brian-acton-says-facebook-used-him-to-get-its-acquisition-past-eu-regulators/