Back in August, Facebook announced that WhatsApp will soon start to share their data with the social network. Users were given the option to opt out of this, and you might have seen this reminder being shared across your social network and in messages. Now it seems that thanks to the backlash Facebook has gotten, they will be halting data sharing in Europe.
You might recall that when Facebook announced this initiative that there were countries in Europe that were unhappy, now a report from the Financial Times (paywall; via Engadget) has revealed that Facebook has decided to give in to the pressure and put a halt on its data sharing policy.
Of course this doesn’t mean that Facebook has changed its mind about collecting data from WhatsApp. Instead Facebook and WhatsApp will be meeting with representatives in Europe to address the concerns, and how they can make the feature an opt-in feature as opposed to users having to manually remove themselves from it.
We’re not sure if Facebook plans to apply this to other parts of the world that they and WhatsApp operate in, but hopefully watchdogs in other countries will be able to pressure Facebook into doing the same thing. In a statement made to the Financial Times, Facebook said, “We hope to continue our detailed conversations with the UK Information Commissioner’s Office and other data protection officials. We remain open to working collaboratively to address their questions.”
Filed in . Read more about Apps, Facebook, Privacy and Whatsapp.