On Wednesday, January 6, Facebook-owned WhatsApp notified its users of an update to their terms and privacy policies. The revamped terms fully express the boundaries between WhatsApp and its parent company, Facebook, confirming that users have long been concerned that their personal data will promote the indulgence of Facebook.
The updated privacy policy was accompanied by an ultimatum: users can choose between agreeing to WhatsApp – with more than 2 billion users – sharing their personal data with Facebook, or alternatively having their account deleted.
Facebook acquired the fast-growing messaging platform, WhatsApp, in 2014 for almost $ 22 billion – an amount further increased by the rising shares of Facebook amid the announcement of the deal to the public. It remains Facebook’s largest acquisition to date, and one of the largest in Silicon Valley’s history. By comparison, Facebook spent a meager $ 1 billion buying the ubiquitous photo-sharing platform Instagram.
With the new messaging platform and its user base in hand, Facebook has continued to strengthen WhatsApp’s security. Using an open source coding methodology developed by Signal, Facebook engineers rewrote WhatsApp’s internal end-to-end encryption. This means that WhatsApp’s servers cannot see the users’ messages, much less share their content with third parties. Once a message is delivered to the intended user, it is removed from WhatsApp’s servers, although the messaging app does maintain the metadata of the users.
According to the Apple App Store, through its various features and functions, WhatsApp collect the next metadata of users: their phone model; their telephone number; the phone’s operating system; the phone’s his strength at different times and places; the user’s time zone; the phone’s audience IP address; the user’s frequency of use of the app; their purchases; their status updates; details about group chats; address books; profile photos; and the profile’s about information.
Stranger around WhatsApp’s privacy and security – despite end-to-end encryption – has resurfaced recently 2016, when WhatsApp users first got the option not to share their data with Facebook for targeted advertising. However, as of this year, the latest terms and conditions of WhatsApp evade the room for maneuver, which aims to further streamline WhatsApp’s social media platform and merge with its parent, Facebook.
Before they announced their new terms and conditions, most recently in December, the WhatsApp privacy policy read: “Respect for your privacy is coded in our DNA. Since we started WhatsApp, we have been striving to build our services with a set of strong privacy principles in mind. ”
WhatsApp’s recently revised agreement praises its former concerns for privacy, saying: ‘Apart from the services offered by Facebook Inc. and Facebook Ireland Ltd, own and manage Facebook each of the companies below, in accordance with their respective Terms of Service and Privacy Policies. We may share information about you in our family of businesses to facilitate, support and integrate their activities and improve our services.”
WhatsApp’s new policy deployment has taken a backseat as privacy-minded users start flocking to open source rival Signal, a move quickly endorsed by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who simply tweeted has: “Use signal.”
Use Signal
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) 7 January 2021
As noted by Business Insider, Signal saw in the week following the announcement of the update of WhatsApp’s privacy policy a 4 200% increase in downloading users. Although both programs boast end-to-end coding, Signal’s main selling point is the independence of larger technology companies – that is, until one of them obtains it. Moreover, as for the first time in a Reddit thread, by On January 9, Signal took off in a myriad of App Store download maps to the top of the countries including the United States, Canada, entire parts of Europe, Asia, and South America.
Amid Signal’s climb on top of Apple’s download maps, Signal’s social media team quickly noticed that Facebook, in turn, was responding by buying large quantities of ads in the Apple App Store and promoting their own Messenger app. when they searched for “Signal”. appeared.
Facebook is probably more comfortable selling ads than buying them, but they will do what they have to do to be the best result if some people search for ‘Signal’ in the App Store.
PS There will never be ads in Signal because your data does not belong to yours. pic.twitter.com/waVPcl4wHe
– Sein (@signalapp) 10 January 2021
With this increasing pressure, WhatsApp announced on January 15 a delay in implementing their revamped privacy policy. The comprehensive changes to the company’s privacy policy, which was originally scheduled to take effect on February 8, have been postponed until May 15 – while refusing to announce any changes or modifications to the policy plan itself.
As rationalized on the WhatsApp website, the impetus for sharing information with Facebook is to better serve users: ‘WhatsApp works and shares information with the other Facebook businesses to receive services such as infrastructure, technology and systems that help us Provide and improve WhatsApp. and to keep WhatsApp and the other Facebook businesses safe. When we receive services from the Facebook companies, the information we share with them is used to help WhatsApp in accordance with our instructions. ”
As noted by Bloomberg, the vast majority of Facebook’s revenue of $ 21.5 billion in the third quarter of 2020 came from advertising. Currently, WhatsApp, with over 2 billion users, is completely without ads; in the broader perspective of Facebook, it is completely lost revenue.
However, Europe has been largely left untouched by Facebook’s penchant for data sharing. Operated by the stringent privacy laws and regulated by the GDPR data protection regulations, companies like Facebook face a wide range of fines in their gross annual revenue – up to 4% – if it is in breach of the European Union’s legal maze of privacy. law. In 2016, as the Seattle Times report, Facebook was violated in violation of EU antitrust laws and fined $ 134 million for providing false and misleading information to regulators amid Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp. At the time, Facebook claimed that it was not possible to combine WhatsApp data with other services offered by their platform.
Facebook and WhatsApp are not outliers in the tech world. In an era of cloud computing and machine learning, data is the best. Facebook aims to collect and organize data from their own and WhatsApp users only to improve the services and to serve users better.
In a digitized era, it is practically impossible to avoid distributing data to the technical titans. Even something as harmless as having food delivered by Uber, the firm in question offers you location and culinary taste – data is later merged with millions more and analytical models passed on to predict your next meal.
In addition to services like Gmail or Search, Google boasts its own recordings called Opinion Rewards. Google openly asks for your approval in exchange for coins used in Google’s own market. Your habits, tastes and interests are a food for the fiery appetite of these technology enterprises. Data that they enter into their analytical models and use to hone targeted advertising and promote their core.
Human nature has an inherent desire for socialization, and a natural affinity for immediate comfort. This makes it impossible for most people to avoid the coveted understanding of Silicone Valley’s most fraudulent services. Facebook and its technological cohorts take advantage of this human fallibility, offering people a seemingly free platform to connect with friends and family while effectively preserving a digital farm, designed to harvest data. Whether it’s Google, WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook or any of the myriad social media platforms that permeate today’s internet, if you do not pay for the product, you are probably the product.
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The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of The Daily Wire.
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