WhatsApp this week issued an FAQ explaining the terms of its updated privacy policy and responding to anxieties that the firm behind the text-messaging app will share personal information with the parent company Facebook. WhatsApp explained the update doesn’t affect the privacy of messages exchanged between friends and family and rather relates to messaging businesses through the platform. The company also told it will provide further transparency about how they collect and use data.
WhatsApp affirmed that neither it nor Facebook can see users’ private messages or hear their calls. WhatsApp also doesn’t hold logs of who people message or call neither can it see the person’s shared location (neither can Facebook). It also doesn’t share users’ contacts with Facebook and maintains WhatsApp groups private, according to the FAQ.
Under WhatsApp’s privacy policy, businesses have the option to use “secure hosting services from Facebook to manage WhatsApp chats with their customers, answer questions, and send helpful information like purchase receipts,” WhatsApp says. If you communicate with a business, it will have access to what you’re saying and then use that information for marketing, which could involve advertising on Facebook. WhatsApp says it clearly marks conversations with businesses that use Facebook’s hosting services. The shopping activity of users who interact with Facebook’s Shops commerce feature through WhatsApp can be utilized to display related ads on Facebook and Instagram. WhatsApp says this feature is voluntary and that when the user uses it, it will tell you in the app how your data is being shared with Facebook.
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