WhatsApp Future Update Could Put Your Privacy at Risk

If you are using WhatsApp, then we have some bad news about your privacy. The EU lawmakers have disclosed that they are close to sealing a deal that would let the messaging app forward user details and information to its own parent company, namely Facebook. Facebook had previously bought WhatsApp in 2014, and initially they said they wouldn’t mess with the privacy policy set in place with the messaging app.

Is This Going to Remain Like This?

However, we don’t know for sure whether they are still going to stick with this policy or not. Last year, the social media giant announced that they have plans to use WhatsApp user data in order to target better their users. In this way, they can improve their ads algorithm on Facebook. Naturally, in the beginning this decision sparked lots of controversies and anger among users, but now it seems that it’s closer and closer to becoming reality.

In the recent years, Facebook has been negotiating with European regulators in order to reach a deal that would let them use data taken from WhatsApp users. Last year, users did not consent to this change, and 28 data protection authorities from the European Union asked both companies to stop data sharing among themselves. Now it seems that by this summer, we might see an agreement between the giant and the European authorities.

Helen Dixon, a Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland, says that a big part of the issue was with the ways in which the two companies are going to approach this. According to her, everything would have been better if the two companies would have been clearer and more transparent about the quality of information they offered to the users. As of now, it seems that they are still discussing the matter.