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Facebook's WhatsApp Data Gambit Faces Federal Privacy Complaint (vice.com)
Sam Gustin, writing for Motherboard: Facebook's decision to begin harvesting data from its popular WhatsApp messaging service provoked a social media uproar on Thursday, and prompted leading privacy advocates to prepare a federal complaint accusing the tech titan of violating US law. On Thursday morning, WhatsApp, which for years has dined out on its reputation for privacy and security, announced that it would begin sharing user phone numbers with its Menlo Park-based parent company in an effort "to improve your Facebook ads and products experiences." Consumer privacy advocates denounced the move as a betrayal of WhatsApp's one billion users -- users who had been assured by the two companies that "nothing would change" about the messaging service's privacy practices after Facebook snapped up the startup for a whopping $19 billion in 2014. "WhatsApp users should be shocked and upset," Claire Gartland, Consumer Protection Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a leading US consumer advocacy group, told Motherboard. "WhatsApp obtained one billion users by promising that it would protect user privacy. Both Facebook and WhatsApp made very public promises that the companies would maintain a separation. Those were the key selling points of the deal."
Facebook altered its Terms of Service to the detriment of it's user base in order to make more money. That's not news, it's a day at the office.
And why not? Facebook exists to make money.
Facebook doesn't exist as a charity to provide a free platform for you to show grandma pictures of your lunch. We've all known that Facebook invades every bit of privacy that you allow it to, it absorbs every sliver of information you wittingly or unwittingly provide it.
That's the cost of dealing with Facebook. If you use Facebook you give them every right to collect whatever information on you that they choose. In many cases, Facebook knows more about you than you do yourself.
People have two choices: 1) decide whatever benefit you get from Facebook is worth giving away every information about yourself and all privacy. or 2) don't use Facebook.
If privacy is important to you, you won't use them. If privacy is unimportant to you, no-one has the right to complain.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch