WhatsApp is to hand your phone number to Facebook WhatsApp has updated its terms and privacy policy for the first time in four years as part of parent company Facebook’s plans to generate cash through app users' data. While WhatsApp has been a separate service from Facebook since its acquisition for $16bn two years ago, the companies are now going to enjoy a cosier …
FB never had my mobile number, and it will remain so.
Never installed their app, used m.facebook.com... Eventually they turned up the crippling to force mobile users to install their intrusive messenger app if they wanted to send messages... Installed Opera instead, as the mobile website messenger is only deliberately crippled for specific browsers, which doesn't currently include Opera.
"FB never had my mobile number, and it will remain so."
Unless of course any of your friends or family have allowed FB or Whatsapp to access their contacts. Which they probably have.
Chances are, they've already got your number from multiple other people, so they know your mobile number, probably your email as well, and they have an idea of who you're friends with. You might even have been tagged in a photo so they know what you look like too.
I don't have a FB account either but I have no illusions that it means they don't know anything about me.
@phuzz: This. I use FB only via web, my missus had Whatsapp for a while before she joined FB (including an overlapping period after the buyout) and after the buyout, I started getting friend suggestions of her friends with whom I'd had no contact on FB. Can't see any other way that could have happened.
So a fat lot of good withholding my phone number from Zuckerbitch did me, in the end.
Facebook are the scummiest of the lot. They don't delete your data. I left Facebook 5 years ago, requested data deletion. If increase a fake account now, provide no real details, it has friend suggestions of family and friends. Clearly my IP address and friends data is still in there.
Google gets all the bad rap, but Facebook and Microsoft are the real bad guys.
I started getting a message on my brilliant Nokia 808 (running Symbian) that WhatsApp will no longer be supported on my device after the end of 2016. I guess they just can't be bothered / get the APIs to work in a non Android / IOS environment to "better improve their service". Suits me as will no longer be using WhatsApp and will be uninstalling it based on today's news.
I've never had a facebook / twitter account and use DuckDuckGo 99% of the time.
I'm constantly amazed at how people can't appear to live without these "services".
I am planning to stop using whatsapp (unless they allow it to be moved to SD card to reduce its footprint) when they drop support for Nokia and BB phones. (Since it will cut off my mum, my brother and one of my best friends.) I have been advocating Telegram to all my contacts.
Though as far as I can tell telegram isn't likely to happen on Symbian, so it looks like ICQ might be the best replacement.
Telegram uploads a copy of your address book to their servers too. It is also not actually secure as many people seem to believe. It never even encrypted messages by default unless you turned it on.
Signal is the better choice if you want security. It also uploads your phone book but does it in a more secure way. Bloom filters.
The creators of Signal made it for privacy from the start and knowing their ethos they would never pass on your address book even if they could in a meaningful way.
I'm sure there are easier ways to get my contact list - googlemail for one. So that isn't an issue to me, however I looked up Signal but it appears it suffers from the same limitations as whatsapp, single device and iOS, Android only.
I like telegram because of the multiple device support and the support for Windows, Mac, Linux and there's even a BlackBerry client.
But thanks for the info, I was unaware of Signal previously.
Have a million upvotes for the painful truth.
I had some good news recently, someone was trying to tag my mugshot on FB and it didn't have me on file - which means the person taking all those pictures at that wedding I was pssed at years ago clearly never bothered.
But I fail at paying attention and didn't see or forgot that whatsapp was part of one of the commercial arms of the bottom inspectors and I'm on the verge of being cornered into using FB because people don't remember to read their email more than once every six months.
Though once I'm on FB even with minimal everything that opens the door because everybody else is a fckn blabbermouth.
"but they have all your data not from you but by your friends and so who do use these services"
Too true. Facebook tracks you via your friends that use Facebook, and via trackers on the websites you visit.
They maintain so called "Shadow Profiles" on non face book members:
http://www.zdnet.com/article/firm-facebooks-shadow-profiles-are-frightening-dossiers-on-everyone/
And track or infer 98 data points from your web behaviour.
http://gizmodo.com/all-of-the-creepy-things-facebook-knows-about-you-1785510980
Facebook makes the old Stasi look like a bunch of slackers.
Facebook's big push to make money is to enter the corporate market. That means national sales offices. Which brings them under the jurisdiction of local data protection offices, even if they weren't already. And of course their European operations are based out of Ireland.
Canada seems to apply it's rules worldwide already.
You do realise don't you that Facebook puts a lot of effort these days into tracking non-users as well as users?
You don't have to have an account for Facebook to have information on you.
With NoScript, Privacy Badger, Adblock Plus, and clearing cookies regularly (not just on exit), I think it will be harder for Farcebook to reliably track me.
"Thank the gods that I don't have an Facebook account!"
Yes you do, you just can't see it... unless you open an account.
WhatsApp > Settings > Account > Delete My Account.
Ah, but I think you'll find that won't delete the address book data they got off you. You may leave, but you still exposed your friends and other contacts when you joined and I reckon they won't let you undo that. It is thus recommended you add some Data Protection office contacts, but don't label them as such - sync before you leave and it'll be fun when they start abusing that..
Practical advice on how to not accept this:
https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/26000016
Before you tap Agree to accept our updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, tap Read.
You will see a control at the bottom of the screen. If you do not want your account information shared with Facebook to improve your Facebook ads and products experiences, you can uncheck the box or toggle the control.
believe it or not
I think the UK and EU Data Protection Commissioners might have something to say about that.
The point being that it is easier to ask forgiveness than permission. The damage is done, they have your info and they won't be deleting it. I'm verging on the point of going back to a simple calls + SMS phone.
Assuming you have both, how can they link your WhatsApp profile (that has a phone number) which your Facebook account (which doesn't)?
Are they linking using the email address or what? I have a different one for both. I've never associated my mobile number with my Facebook account and have no intention of doing so...
They will link it by statistical analysis of the networks of your friends that use WhatsApp and/or Facebook. Many will have uploaded contact details, others may have uploaded your email addresses etc. Its not a hard problem to solve. They may not get your full name, but that's not what they actually want. They will have a unique identifier for YOU, and it will almost certainly be right. Ditto, and with bells on, what google is capable of doing. It doesn't matter if you never ever use anything by google, chances are very high that if you use the internet, there is a unique identifier in google's system with an electronic 'signature' that matches you.
Take a step back and imagine the data trove that Google can have on almost anyone, even someone who tries to be 'dark'. If you are a casual non tech user who accepts cookies, uses Gmail and has an android phone, google probably knows more about you than even your closest confidante.
I would really love a major news vendor to expose this to the public because I think many people would be shocked to understand this. I don't think many people realize that almost all web pages they visit are connected to the same company that runs their phone (for many) and that provides their mail, and manages all their files, and their work's files, and their online maps, and their internet searches etc etc. They may think they know this, but I don't think they grasp the implications fully.
Icon because we are way way beyond 1984 now.
Yes, you're right (and I already grok all of that).
However, the article seems to imply that they will add your WhatsApp mobile number to your Facebook account profile - something FB has nagged for for years and I've always resisted. No means no, right?
I realise/accept/hate the fact that *they* are able to identify "me", but I will also be very pissed off if they add my mobile number to my FB account without asking.
https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/26000016
'The Facebook family of companies will still receive and use this information for other purposes such as improving infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities.'
I've used Facebook just to participate in a couple of special interest groups, treating Facebook as a forum provider in effect. However, since they've started overriding my Adblocker and force feeding me very poorly targeted adverts I've "closed" my account. They kept pestering me too for a phone number, school, workplace etc but no chance I was going to feed them that info, especially as I registered using a fake name anyway.
You need it for added "facebook features".
So I used a burner £10 SIM in a £15 burner phone. I use it with fake data and a penname.
Everyone saw this coming. Anyone with two braincells, otherwise why buy Whatsapp?
Facebook is a parasitical walled garden. Their privacy settings are meant to be awkward and ignored. They are making their fortune out of exploiting private information. If Regulators really cared about consumers, then Twitter, Facebook and Google would be shuttered, not because they help terrorism (they don't), but because they are the worst examples of exploitation of ordinary people. Apart from the exploitation they make bullying and spreading lies too easy.
Shame on the Media promoting and using them.
@ Mage ...... The SIM might be anonymous but what about the phone you put it in? Cash purchase? Do you use the phone for email or have any apps that can access your contacts or the phones IMIE? It's just a matter of joining up the dots to go from a bunch of interlinked data to that same data being linked to your identity tagged as "burner phone details".
First time you send me anything from someone I don't know, the app gets removed. It's quite simple.
I'm already pissed at having paid for five years, it then turning "free", and I get NOTHING back for that. Not even an option to turn off these ads for the remainder of my years?
Try it. See how quickly you can get people uninstalling it. Because that's all you'll achieve.
Entire "platform" is a cesspool of ads, voyeurism, and political hatred. I stopped using it ages ago as the creepiness factor was becoming worse and worse. Funny how Americans create a tempest over the NSA but willingly give all their personal info to Facebook, including pictures, schedules, and current locations of their kids. Not defending the NSA, merely stating Facebook is just as bad if not worse.
This post has been deleted by its author
1. Americans are so afraid of "big government", they have a huge blind spot for corporate abuse.
2. They didn't notice that there's no distinction any more. Corporations buy and sell their databases between each other, and with the state. It's just one big corporate oligarchy now.
From their blog post in December 2012, still online, entitled "Why we don't sell ads"
"
Advertising isn't just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought. At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data, upgrading the servers that hold all the data and making sure it's all being logged and collated and sliced and packaged and shipped out... And at the end of the day the result of it all is a slightly different advertising banner in your browser or on your mobile screen.
Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product.
"
Well, here's a development that surprises absolutely no-one. Some of my friends use Whatsapp and tried convincing me to join them because this wouldn't happen, or that it wouldn't be a problem.
On the occasions I use it, Facebook whines constantly about wanting my mobile number. I'm not giving them it. Not ever. Simply on the basis that it may be taken as a suggestion that I want them to phone/text me. And that would be a terrible lie.
However, I fear that they have it anyway, having slurped it off the contacts of a friend.
works well for me too, unless I want to send pictures to people, then it starts getting expensive. Or if i want to send group messages to people, which seems to have got more complicated with the invention of (so called) smartphones.
I've stayed away from watsapp for ages, never needed it, bog standard sms, and as an extension iMessage have served me just fine, but more and more people I know, and meet are using (almost exclusively) whatsapp, so if I want to be able to have a reliable conversation with them (especially the group chats) that is my only choice, equally sending cheap / free MMS between different OS's.
"Whether it's hearing from your bank about a potentially fraudulent transaction, or getting notified by an airline about a delayed flight, many of us get this information elsewhere, including in text messages and phone calls"
Oh jeese, yeah, let me sign up for a service run by facebook so I can receive these notification over WhatsApp instead of by phone, which I already have setup. That sounds SO much more convenient.
How idiotic.
Comments like this crack me up. What about Friends / Family / Wags etc???
Are you a hermit in Montana? If not, someone is blagging about you on one of these platforms, they are simply too pervasive to ignore anymore...
No one is immune, consider the weakest link in your contact chain. If your name or anything about you is in any way unique, consider yourself tracked....
I find the people who comment in that vein to be basically very selfish.
Yes, big pat on the back for being paranoid. You clearly don't care about anyone else, and if you do, show it.
Start a petition, email a watchdog.
But if all you have to offer is 'I avoided it' you are part of the problem by way of APATHY
Wrong at so many levels. This called "voting with your feet". Letting folks know that you are doing this plants the seed in others minds. There are businesses going under everyday because shoppers/users have voted with their feet.
I'll also add, the best form of advertising is word of mouth. It comes in two forms... good and bad. The same principle applies on such topics as Wn10. The negative tells me that not all is well and cheerful in X(product) Land.
"Whether it's hearing from your bank about a potentially fraudulent transaction, or getting notified by an airline about a delayed flight, many of us get this information elsewhere, including in text messages and phone calls"
Yeah, except I travel quite a bit and have expensive roaming (Norway...). Receiving an SMS is free, internet access is not. I'll stick with the old system.
And that's before considering the rest...
It already does the harvesting part.. how else do you have contacts in your Whatsapp contact list with an "invite" button, with no way to remove them except physically deleting the contact from the main address book. The workaround however, is to set the contact type to something that isn't 'mobile' to hide them - but the underlying issue is still there.
And some of the bystanders, hearing it, said, “This man is calling The Zuck.” And one of them at once ran and took a smartphone, installed Telegram, Signal, Viber and other instant messaging clients to it, and gave it to him to use. But the others said, “Wait, let us see whether The Zuck will come to save him.” And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his mobile number.
was that they haven't already being doing this (or so they say)
Some months ago the name of someone I worked with for a few years turned up in the Facebook suggested friends list.
We lived in different cities, worked for different employers but worked together on a couple of projects for a common customer of both our employers. This was all pre-2008 so generally before Facebook became widespread outside of university campuses and definitely before Whatsapp.
I wondered how Facebook made the connection as there were no common "friends" either. Then I realised I still had his number in my phone contacts. I've never had the Facebook app on my phone, but I do have Whatsapp installed and had assumed that Facebook had got hold of my contact list via Whatsapp (this person is not a Whatsapp contact either).
So if they are only now talking about sharing contacts, then how did Facebook make the connection? Spooky!
I have a couple of contacts on my whatsapp to help with the errr...gardening which I keep very seperate from anything else. I log in to facebook one day, lo and behold they have become suggested friends. For a laugh, when meeting them in person, I greeted them by real name and it drained the colour from their face after realising what just happened.
I only just started using WhatsApp because I basically work in a big Faraday cage and don't get 3G signal so SMS and voice don't work, but, via the office WiFi, I could still get messages from my recently medically retired wife if she was particularly unwell.
As I've managed to avoid using the FB app (use m. site) and haven't given them my mobile number I'm a little annoyed that this is going to happen (oddly enough, as WhatsApp only just came up on my radar I didn't realise it was owned by FB when I installed it).
I shall let my family know that I'm going to stop using it and delete my account, uninstall the app and look for something else as easy and convenient we can all use.
I must remember my maxim - 'if it's free - you're being productised'.
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