WhatsApp To Share Some Data With Facebook (bloomberg.com)

Two years ago when Facebook bought WhatsApp, the instant messaging client said that the deal would not affect the digital privacy of its users. Things are changing now, WhatsApp said Thursday. The Facebook-owned app will share with the company some member information, as well as some analytics data of its users. Bloomberg reports: WhatsApp announced a change to its privacy policy today that allows businesses to communicate with users. The messages could include appointment reminders, delivery and shipping notifications or marketing material, the company said in its revised terms of service. In a blog post, WhatsApp said it will be testing these business features over the coming months. The strategy is an important step for Facebook as it attempts to make money from its most expensive acquisition. In addition to the messages from businesses, WhatsApp said it would begin sharing more information about its users with the "Facebook family." The data, including a person's phone number, could be used to better targets ads when browsing Facebook or Instagram, WhatsApp said.

Comments

"Some" data?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try all the data. Privacy is dead, and has been for quite a while.

Re:"Some" data?

[The Real Dr John]

This is why mergers and buyouts are such a problem. People need to start boycotting companies that do this kind of thing. Also time to bring back anti-trust laws and break up any companies that are "too big to fail".

Re:"Some" data?

[Anonymous Coward]

The majority of my friends aren't geeks. What really weirds me out is that they say they wouldn't tell their friends everything about their private lives, but if I tell them that IT admins with access to their entire online life are just people like me, their eyes glaze over.

I try to explain it in simple terms: You don't want me to know this private stuff about you - but in my professional capacity I have access to all this information about you. There are numerous examples of governments with political agendas or individuals with personal agendas abusing access to private information. You are relying on the fact that you will never knowingly or unknowingly get on the wrong side of anybody in that position.

But still, blank.

I don't know how to explain it to people. I mean when I was a kid life was simpler, as actions were less likely to have consequences: I'd just go into l33t hax0r mode and obtain files from their machine / school computer account and then show them what I can do. They'd feel embarrassed and I'd teach them a bit about basic security. But as an adult and in this "post-9/11" world of fear, I wouldn't dare take that approach.

I just don't know what to do.

Re:"Some" data?

[TheRaven64]

It was always a stupid-sounding idea to use Whatsapp (I mean that as a totally independent fact, relative to whether or not Whatsapp was actually any good or not). From the very beginning, it was just someone's proprietary app that used an undocumented protocol. Nobody who is trying to do things right, is going to use anything like that.

Of the proprietary messengers, WhatsApp was the least bad. It was founded by people who grew up in the Soviet Union and left with an abiding hatred of surveillance, had a very strong privacy policy, and did end-to-end encryption. Also, using Erlang on FreeBSD, it had a lot of geek cred. Unfortunately, when Facebook bought it there wasn't much chance of it keeping the philosophy of the founders. On the plus side, they did donate $1m from the sale price to the FreeBSD Foundation.

I used to be a big advocate of XMPP, but it's largely been mismanaged into the ground by a lack of leadership in the standards body and a lack of decent reference implementations for the client side. Tox seems like the best bet at the moment for producing something that is both secure and open, yet with implementations that you can give to normal humans and get them connected.

Re:"Some" data?

[jenningsthecat]

...People need to start boycotting companies that do this kind of thing.

The vast majority of people don't care and don't want to know. They've been trained from birth to not be analytical and to follow the herd. For those in power, making "the people" feel powerless is good; making them feel that everything is OK and that they have neither need nor desire for power, is even better.

Also time to bring back anti-trust laws and break up any companies that are "too big to fail".

To a large extent, laws are effectively written and enforced by the companies that are "too big to fail" and their friends. Unless and until corporate hegemony is upended or destroyed this kind of abuse will continue to grow.

Re:Repeat after me...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's open source. You're not the product, you're the quality control department.