WhatsApp to share user data with Facebook

While we would’ve thought WhatsApp was the more privacy conscious alternative to Facebook Messenger, it looks like that has changed. WhatsApp will now be sharing user data with its mother company, Facebook. And yes, this information will be used to sell more ads. While they won’t be seeing your messages as WhatsApp employs end-to-end encryption, what Facebook will be seeing is your metadata, or the data about your messages. So yes, they might be able to see your phone number and from that bit of information find out where you live and target more ads to you.

We already know Facebook collects as much data as it can from us, so it really was bound to happen that WhatsApp, which the social network bought for US$16 billion in 2014. Aside from phone number, though, both companies are pretty vague on what information WhatsApp will be sharing. But if you see the data points Facebook collects, you sort of get an idea what they might get from WhatsApp.

Source: Gizmodo