WhatsApp to share users’ personal information with Facebook

WhatsApp's new terms and conditions has gotten a lot of people talking, as the messaging app will now share users' personal information with Facebook.

WhatsApp will now share its users’ personal information, including phone numbers, IP addresses, contacts, and more with Facebook from February 8, 2021.

Users who want to keep using WhatsApp must agree to these new terms, as there will be no option to opt-out. The only way to object is to leave the service.

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“As part of the Facebook Companies, WhatsApp receives information from and shares information with the other Facebook Companies,” as stated in its privacy policy, this week
“We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings, including the Facebook Company Products.”

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Users will be presented with the following choice in the app: accept these terms by February 8 or be blocked from using the end-to-end encrypted chat app.

That means users who wish to keep using WhatsApp must be prepared to give up personal info such as their names, profile pictures, status updates, phone numbers, contacts list, and IP addresses, as well as data about their mobile devices, such as model numbers, operating system versions, and network carrier.
If users engage with businesses via the app, details such as shipping addresses and the amount of money spent on orders may be passed to Facebook too as explained by the register.

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Alternative channels

For people who are concerned about their privacy and would not like to accept, there are other messaging apps alternative that you can use other than Facebook and Whatsapp Messenger: Allo, iMessage, Riot, Signal, Skype, Telegram, Threema, Viber, Wickr, Wire. Signal and Telegram are top on that list.