Facebook has been trying for years to unify its messaging service, including putting Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram on the same technology base. While this makes development easier, it is clear Facebook, a company famed for flaunting user privacy, wanted to tap into the sweet data goldmine that is WhatsApp.
In fact, a privacy policy change on WhatsApp is pointing towards this goal, allowing Facebook to access data for marketing. As you might expect, the change has not been met positively amongst WhatsApp users.
According to the company, “While not everyone shops with a business on WhatsApp today, we think that more people will choose to do so in the future and it’s important people are aware of these services.”
WhatsApp is now hoping to ease some concerns by compromising. The original privacy policy was going to force users to agree or simply stop using the app. That now seems to not be the case. WABetaInfo reports WhatsApp users will only need to accept the policy if they want to communicate with businesses.
Privacy Concerns
One of the reasons why users are angry is because WhatsApp automatically encrypts messages. This means no third-party, not even the company itself, can see the messages your send and receive. The new privacy policy would open the gates on this encryption to Facebook.
It is a conflict of why WhatsApp is appealing and another example of Facebook seeing users and their information as commodities and not customers. While user feedback has led to a slight backtrack, I think this is just the start.
Facebook has decided it now wants data from WhatsApp users and will increasingly look for ways to obtain it.
Tip of the day: Headsets are a vital tool for communication and can cause stressful moments when they don´t work as planned. In our tutorial we are showing you how to properly set up a headset on your Windows 10 PC so this will be a thing of the past.
Last Updated on February 14, 2022 8:21 pm CET by Luke Jones
