When WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook, back in 2014, Jan Koum, one of the founders of WhatsApp talked about privacy and its importance. He even went on to say that none of the data of users has ever been collected and they had no plans to change that. But now, things are taking a turn as WhatsApp announces in a blog post that it would start disclosing the phone number and analytics with Facebook.
Why so? WhatsApp has done too little about earning revenue till date, and if it has to do something on that front and don’t want to annoy you with ads, here it is – share your data to make Facebook’s business information and database better. “Even as we coordinate more with Facebook in the months ahead, your encrypted messages stay private and no one else can read them. Not WhatsApp, not Facebook, nor anyone else. We won’t post or share your WhatsApp number with others, including on Facebook, and we still won’t sell, share, or give your phone number to advertisers.”
The good thing is, it is not a compulsion. You can opt out of it and ask WhatsApp to not involve you in this and not share your data with Facebook. Here’s how you can do that.
In WhatsApp, tap on the three vertical dots to open the dropdown menu and there, tap on Settings.
Under the Settings, go to Account and the last option would be of “Share my account info”. There’ll also be an explanatory message telling you what will happen when this data is shared.
Uncheck that option and you are done. But here’s a twist. The ToS and Privacy Policy page mentions that while you are not allowing the data to be shared, it will not be shared for the Facebook ads and product experiences, but the Facebook family of companies will still receive and use this information for other purposes such as improving infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities. These companies include Facebook Payments Inc., Atlas, Instagram LLC, Onavo, Parse, Moves, Oculus, LiveRail, WhatsApp Inc, and Masquerade.
