Just days into the new year, Facebook can’t help but make headlines.
(We won’t talk about the company’s stunning and highly controversial decision to de-platform a certain someone just a day after lots of someones decided to storm a certain building in a certain city in what instantly became one of the most insane days in the history of a certain country. You’ve probably already spent countless hours glued to a screen digesting all of that.)
Instead, let’s talk about something a little more light-hearted, like your digital privacy. They’re messing with it. Again.
WhatsApp, long praised for its dedication to user privacy, finally made the announcement many expected it to make after being acquired by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014: It will officially be sharing lots of your data with its parent company.
“As part of the Facebook Companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, the other Facebook Companies.
We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings, including the Facebook Company Products.”
To be clear, the company made a similar announcement just two years after the acquisition, but did at least provide users with the opportunity of opting out of the data sharing. This latest statement comes with no such opt-out, giving users a “take it or leave it” approach. Users who want to continue using WhatsApp will have to agree to the new terms by Feb. 8. Those who don’t will have to deactivate their account.
Courtesy of Apple’s sweeping decision to force app developers to clearly disclose the sort of data they’re collecting, here’s a quick rundown of what WhatsApp reserves the right to harvest (and share with Facebook):
And if you were at all curious as to what Facebook (and Facebook Messenger) was already collecting in exchange for access to overused memes and updates on your extended family’s never-ending drama:
(Some lovely news for our friends across the pond: WhatsApp users in the United Kingdom will not have to share their data with Facebook. Congrats on that and discovering The Beatles. Well done.)
Fortunately for privacy-focused WhatsApp users who don’t want to stick around for the rest of the show, there are some other options. And who better to take advice from than the now-richest man on the face of the planet:
It’s unclear if Musk’s suggestion comes as a direct result of WhatsApp’s controversial decision. It’s also unclear (but pretty hard to deny) if his Tweet, which garnered more than 250,000 Likes, resulted in what became a hectic morning over at Signal HQ.
For context, Signal, which has long been considered one the best messaging option for users with a penchant for privacy, only collects Contact Info. Even still (per Apple’s handy-dandy App Privacy disclosure requirement) Signal does not link that information to your identity. More than 100,000 users have downloaded Signal in the past two days, according to Reuters.
There’s also Telegram, which garnered 2.2 million downloads during a similar time period.
WhatsApp, meanwhile, is still going strong. While the Facebook-owned platform saw its new installs metric drop 11% from the previous week, that still amounted to 10.5 million downloads in the first seven days of the new year.
All three apps make use of end-to-end encryption, which prevents the platforms themselves from accessing the content being sent between the communicating parties (though that does make “User Content” a curious inclusion in WhatsApp’s list of privacy disclosures).
All that said, there’s no denying leaving WhatsApp will be difficult for many. Educating yourself on the value of digital privacy is one thing, but expecting others to act on it? That’s another thing. A messaging platform is only as good as the users on it, and if most of your friends, family, and colleagues vow to remain faithful to the Facebook-owned platform, you may be stuck there for a while.
What do you have to say? Are these privacy concerns big enough for you to move on to a different messaging app? Sound off in the comments below.
