WhatsApp Shares Some Data, but Not as Much as Users Originally Feared

  Turns out WhatsApp is only sharing some, but not all of users’ data with Facebook so that the platform can allow users to easily message businesses to ask quick questions.

   Just as Facebook, which reported $28.1 billion in revenues last quarter, by selling ads on social media websites, WhatsApp also needs to sell services to keep its messaging service free,” explained Zak Doffman, who writes about security and surveillance for Forbes magazine.

   On Jan. 7, WhatsApp told users were told they were forced to agree to a privacy update that was rumored and misreported to involve the collection of users’ data, which would then be shared with Facebook.

   WhatsApp later clarified that it did not share all if users’ data with Facebook, “but suddenly WhatsApp had shone a light on the fact that there is some data sharing,” Doffman wrote.

   The fact that more data needed to be shared for users to communicate with businesses, a money-making venture for WhatsApp, what was broke the previous terms of WhatsApp’s data handling policy.

    “WhatsApp’s owner, Facebook, wants to enable its business customers to communicate with you on WhatsApp, and only if you agree to those contacts,” Doffman wrote. “If you do, though, some of those messages might be stored off of WhatsApp, outside its fabled end-to-end encryption.”

    Doffman does not advise WhatsApp users to quit the app, but he does remind them that the messaging system does harvest “a long list of data, all linked to your identity,” while noting that Signal, iMessage and Telegram also collect and share data from users, although perhaps on a lesser scale.

   How does WhatsApp’s data collection for revenue square with the messaging system’s claim that it “requires” your data to keep its app “reliable and safe?” Doffman asked.

   “Remember—if the product is free, then you’re the product,” Doffman said. “This isn’t complicated.”