WhatsApp will share your information with Facebook

WhatsApp (Photo: Ronen Mendzicki, Gadget)

WhatsApp users around the world have started receiving an update notification in the app for the company’s privacy policy, which changes the existing status and actually states that users have no choice but to agree to share their information with Facebook if they want to use the app, a change that will take effect from 8.2.21 .

While Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014, many users feared the social network would exploit the vast amounts of WhatsApp information for its own needs, which did not actually happen until the August 2016 privacy policy change officially announced the sharing of information between companies, but users could manually cancel it. This option. Now, with the update of the new privacy policy from January 4, this option becomes irrelevant, or in other words: “Agree to the new privacy policy or do not use WhatsApp.”

Going over the “Information You Provide” section of the updated Privacy Policy provides a complete list of the various information the company has access to, including:

• Your account information (phone number and profile name
• User messages in specific situations where they can not go directly to the other party, but are temporarily stored on the company’s servers
• Contacts
• User status
• Transactions and payment data made through WhatsApp
• Customer service and other communications provide
• Technical information about the device from which the user connects, including the IP address and its location if a location is activated

The full text can be read on the WhatsApp website.

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It’s hard to really say that the new policy change was unpredictable and predictable, as it comes as part of Facebook’s broader move to integrate Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. This is one of the main issues for the departure of Jan Koum, one of the founders of WhatsApp, who opposed the sharing of information between the companies.