WhatsApp made an announcement recently about sharing certain data with Facebook, its parent company.
This is being done to make both your personal and professional life simpler and easier. On the personal front, this sharing helps in finding your friends more easily on Facebook. On the other hand, if you own a business, it will be a lesser ordeal to enhance your ad reachability and products experience. Business enterprises will also be able to reach out better to their customers to keep them informed about the latest updates as they can be contacted using their WhatsApp ID that is in turn their phone number.
WhatsApp has assured its users of their privacy by stating that it will not give out the users’ contact details to advertisers and also keep their encrypted messages private. By agreeing to not letyou’re your contact details, the Californian company agrees to keep advertisers in the dark about your phone number by not posting, sharing or selling it anywhere on Facebook. In a blog post, the firm mentioned that by increasing its coordination with Facebook, WhatsApp will be able to track details about how often their services were used by people. This in turn will help them better to keep spam at bay. In other words, Facebook will continue to still access your information to improve your security and take measures to prevent you from being spammed.
However, there are still quite a few people who are skeptical of their privacy being at stake. Keeping this in mind, there is one simple step that you can follow to prevent WhatsApp from making use of your Facebook data.
All that you have to do isremove a preset selection before you actually start using the app’s revised terms of service. Along with the standard “I agree” option at the end of the terms and conditions, there is another “Read More” option. Click on this and you will find a selection stating that you agree to share your WhatsApp details with Facebook. Go ahead and uncheck this check box before you click on I Agree. This is a one-time action and cannot be undone. Once you deactivate the sharing option, you will not be able to revert later, and the sharing option will no longer be found in the Accounts section in WhatsApp settings.
Alternatively, there is no need to start panicking if you have already abided by the terms and conditions, and it is less than 30 days since you have done so. You can still get this stopping done without following any complicated procedure. Move over to the Accounts section of the WhatsApp settings menu. You will find a selection for sharing your account details. Deselect this and you are done. For your confirmation, just check to see that the Share My Account Info option is grayed out. But, do remember that you cannot opt for this method if it is more than a month since you have agreed for the sharing process. Hence, it is always advisable to opt for the first method and uncheck the selection before you make a blind click on the I agree button.
Adopting the above steps can help you feel safe and secure with assured privacy. However, it is worth knowing at least one reason why sharing your contact detail or phone number with Facebook can actually help you. If you are looking up for a friend (who in almost all probability shares his name with many others Facebook), using his or her number can narrow down the search results and bring the concerned person’s details towards the top of the list. This can also help in eliminating the herculean task of going through the entire list till the very bottom and saves quite a lot of time.
The above information pertains solely to stopping your Android and iOS based WhatsApp from sharing your phone number with Facebook. Yet, it must be noted that as of date, WhatsApp has not yet intimated all its customers using WhatsApp on these two platforms about the updated permissions request. This is to say that those who have not got the requests for approval have not been affected. However, Windows and other users are requested to look up online for ways on getting this done to avoid Facebook from gaining access to your contact number.