If you’re an avid WhatsApp user, you should have noticed that the messaging app’s terms of service have been updated for the first time in 4 years. This happened due to the acquisition of WhatsApp by the giant Facebook in 2014, which could have been a simple agreement between two companies like many others, if promises wouldn’t have been broken and didn’t involve private information being shared with the biggest social network in the world. The marriage between WhatsApp and Facebook was too holy to be true. Facebook has now changed the rules mid-game and WhatsApp users will now see their information – that may include phone numbers – being shared with Facebook for various reasons, including the showing of more relevant ads and improved tracking.
This is raising a lot of dust both in America and Europe, as the US Federal Trade Commission is reviewing a joint complaint accusing Facebook of violating a federal law. The Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy also states that Facebook is indeed violating a directive that clarifies that Facebook itself needs to ask the user’s permission for such a change in their privacy policy, as settled in 2011 with the Federal Trade Commission where the social network told its customers that they could keep all their information private.
On the other side of the Atlantic, concerns have been raised among European regulators regarding the collection of data by Facebook from people’s WhatsApp contacts with the Article 29 Working Party stating that “what’s key is that the individual keeps control over his datawhen these are combined by the big Internet players” which is clearly not happening. The Italian data protection authority also made clear that these privacy policy changes leave them concerned about the protection of millions of users’ privacy.
Luckily, you don’t have to accept this mid-game rule changing, as WhatsApp doesn’t force you to do it in order to continue using the service. When faced with the “term update” message simply click on “read more” and uncheck the little box.
If you already accepted the new terms of service though, you’ll still have 30 days to opt out. All you need to do is go to your account settings in WhatsApp and disable the “Share My Account Info” option.
But if the 30 days are long gone, don’t lose hope as there is still an extra – and very simple – way of protecting your information, which is using a VPN. In fact, using a VPN will protect you against many privacy attacks with you being the one in control of your information. With a service such as this by your side, you’ll see your privacy increased thanks to features such as military-grade encryption and different security protocols protect. This tight encryption and the switching between VPN servers makes ad tracking impossible since your IP changes with a simple click. Most VPN providers support multiple connections as well as different devices, including mobile devices with proper native apps, so you can make sure that protection is extended to WhatsApp.
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