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Facebook does not intend to back down on WhatsApp’s privacy policy, despite the three-month postponement decreed by the instant messaging service. Facebook is also unwilling to give an explanation for WhatsApp’s privacy changes.
This is one of the hot issues at the start of 2021. At the beginning of January, WhatsApp announced a major update to its general conditions of use. From now on, the instant messaging service will be able to share certain data with its parent company. General outcry after this announcement, which has the effect of causing a massive exodus of users to the competition, the Signal and Telegram applications (see below). In order to put an end to this wave of departures, WhatsApp has specified the data it will transfer to Facebook. In reality, it is only the exchanges of its subscribers with companies.
In the process, WhatsApp postponed the entry into force of these new terms of use until May 15, 2021. Originally, data sharing with Facebook was to begin on February 8. In a blog post published on January 15, 2021, Facebook tried to reassure users by reminding that end-to-end encryption will not disappear, and that the social network, like WhatsApp, will never have access to their conversations.
However, user concerns do not revolve around encryption. If we trust the explanations of WhatsApp, this data sharing only concerns exchanges with companies. Still very few users make their purchases on WhatsApp. In fact, and as the Android Authority site rightly points out, why force all WhatsApp users to share data from a service that they may never use?
According to Android Authority, this is what Facebook collects from exchanges between you and a business on WhatsApp: phone number; the identifier of your device; GPS data; transaction data; interaction with the product; the user’s identifiers.
A source of additional data
Logically, it is assumed that this information will be used to improve Facebook’s advertising targeting, in particular by optimizing advertisements according to the products that interest you, according to your geographical position, etc. Thanks to these new terms of use on WhatsApp, Facebook offers itself a source of additional data.
Another essential point, Facebook can also recover your phone number. This is crucial data to link your WhatsApp account to Facebook and Instagram. As a reminder, Facebook had undertaken not to recover the telephone numbers of users when WhatsApp was bought out in 2014. After a long investigation, the European Commission found that Facebook had lied on the subject. The social network was then forced to pay a fine of 110 million euros.
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