WhatsApp was bought outright by Facebook in 2014 and is now seen as a messenger app in the Facebook family company.
There are more than 2 billion WhatsApp users worldwide and they are all given the same ultimatum either share data with Facebook by the 8th of February or cease to use the WhatsApp messenger app altogether
In 2016 all WhatsApp users were given an one time option to either share their details with Facebook and its family companies or not to share their data, but as we can see that police has been changed and the users are now left with little choice in the matter.
The data gather via this policy change includes
- User phone numbers
- Other people’s phone numbers stored in address books
- Profile names
- Profile pictures
- Status message including when a user was last online
- Diagnostic data collected from app logs
Facebook made the decision to make this change a month after apple started needing iOS app makers including WhatsApp to gather information from its users which include things like – purchases, financial information and location and the list goes on.
According to a spokeswoman from WhatsApp the comment was made that there will be nor major change in the app itself and that the change of data share policy was so that business that use WhatsApp and Facebook could interact with their clients without any issues.
Further we that if one were to take a closer look at the terms and conditions agreement sent by WhatsApp to their users it isn’t people friendly at all, using close to 8,000 words and legal terminology it makes it rather difficult for someone who is not in the legal profession to understand.
In finality it is seen that if the users do not want to comply with this they can leave the app and use other apps that have been built for the same purpose.
