WhatsApp to share user data with Facebook

25 August 2016, 5:38 pm

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Mobile messaging service WhatsApp says it will begin sharing subscriber data with parent Facebook, giving advertisers better access to information on WhatsApp’s one billion-strong user base.

The company said the change will allow Facebook to target advertising at WhatsApp users who are also on the social media platform, and help WhatsApp fight spam on its service.

“By connecting your phone number with Facebook’s systems, Facebook can offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them,” WhatsApp says in a statement. “For example, you might see an ad from a company you already work with, rather than one from someone you’ve never heard of.”

On a chat on the WhatsApp app, an Islamic State group militant offers a woman and her children for sale, in this May 22, 2016, photo taken in northern Iraq. "If you know one of the brothers who has a slave for sale, please let me know," it reads in Arabic. "She wants her owner to sell her. He wants a price of $3,700 for her. She has two daughters, one 3 years old, the other 7 months." IS is believed to be holding some 3,000 Yazidi women and girls as sex slaves, and as it loses territory, it has tightened its grip on them to prevent their escape. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) — A chat on the WhatsApp app. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)

The decision comes four months after WhatsApp rolled out strong end-to-end encryption as a default feature for all users, saying this made the content of their communications impenetrable to all but those sending or receiving a given message.

“Even as we coordinate more with Facebook in the months ahead, your encrypted messages stay private and no one else can read them. Not WhatsApp, not Facebook, nor anyone else,” the company says, in a possible attempt to quieten criticism of the decision to share information.

— AP