WhatsApp plans to share its users’ phone numbers with Facebook, the first time the messaging app has allowed the two services to connect data since Facebook bought it two years ago.
The messaging app’s new privacy policy, published on Thursday, gives it permission to connect Facebook accounts to WhatsApp accounts for the first time. This will give Facebook more data about users, allowing the social network to suggest phone contacts as friends, but may spark privacy concerns.
While the contents of WhatsApp messages such as words and images are end-to-end encrypted, meaning that the app cannot read them, it does have data including phone numbers and information about users’ phones and operating systems.
Continue reading here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/08/25/whatsapps-new-privacy-policy-lets-it-share-your-phone-number-wit/
While WhatsApp previously passed no user information to its parent company Facebook or vice versa, the new privacy policy allows WhatsApp to directly integrate some user data with the social network. WhatsApp’s update describes this as “improving your Facebook ads and products experiences.” The impact on users and their privacy, however, goes much further.
If you use both WhatsApp and Facebook, this change allows Facebook access to several pieces of your WhatsApp information, including your WhatsApp phone number, contact list, and usage data (e.g. when you last used WhatsApp, what device you used it on, and what OS you ran it on). With confusing wording, the update correctly points out that your phone number and messages will not be shared onto Facebook. This means that your data will not be shared publicly on your Facebook page or anywhere else on Facebook’s platform. Instead, it will be shared with Facebook—that is, Facebook systems and the “Facebook family of companies.” While WhatsApp’s privacy-friendly end-to-end encryption remains, and the company ensures users it will not share their data directly with advertisers, this nevertheless presents a clear threat to users’ control of how their WhatsApp data is shared and used.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/08/what-facebook-and-whatsapps-data-sharing-plans-really-mean-user-privacy-0