WhatsApp Warned Against Sharing Data With Facebook

Just read an article on Bloomberg Technology talking about how WhatsApp and Facebook are in ‘data trouble’. Reports say that France’s data protection authority CNIL served WhatsApp with a formal notice stating that they (WhatsApp) only have a month to get their house in order and stop sharing data with Facebook.

Last year, WhatsApp announced to the public how they had decided to revisit their privacy policy. From thereon, WhatsApp started sharing some of its data with its parent company, Facebook. This didn’t sit well with most considering that we had been assured that the acquisition of WhatsApp by the tech giant wouldn’t alter the privacy we had always enjoyed with WhatsApp.

Until now, we had the impression that WhatsApp was only “collecting very little data, and encrypt every message” but turns out WhatsApp is doing more than that.

Seems WhatsApp has been engulfed in the whole big data web, but seriously what do we expect? It’s a ‘chip off the old block’ typa thing if not an ‘impartation by association’ typa situation. Again, realise how this started off as ‘no data to be shared’ policy, to a ‘very little data shared’ policy and now this. It’s a slippery slope, who knows what it’s going to be next (more of a when me thinks).

But then again, we need to remember that WhatsApp is a business. Therefore, it needs to make profits, or survive at least otherwise its existence won’t make sense. However, I think it will be fair for me to note that it’s the way of doing business that we have problems with.

Also, it could just be the fact that WhatsApp is now ‘under new management’. The founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton might have been legit about their desire to keep private private, but now that powers have shifted, things have to be different.

However, with all said and done, WhatsApp promises to work with the CNIL and has expressed interest in letting its users understand more on the type of information it collects as well as the usage of the information collected.