Facebook is currently faced with a privacy scandal and while Facebook itself is being looked at, this is not the first time that Facebook’s other products have also gone under the microscope. WhatsApp has in the past faced some controversy over their plans to share user data with Facebook, and now in light of Facebook’s scandal, the company has come forward to reassure users that they do not collect much info on them.According to WhatsApp, because messages are encrypted end-to-end, they do not have much data to collect on its users to begin with. This is despite some experts who claim that WhatsApp keeps track of user messages. Speaking to the Press Trust of India, a WhatsApp spokesperson said, “WhatsApp collects very little data and every message is end-to-end encrypted. Contrary to recent comments in the media, we are not keeping track of the friends and family you have messaged.”
However these claims are disputed by Vivek Wadhwa, a tech entrepreneur and academic who told the PTI, “One-to-one communication between users are encrypted and may be as secure as WhatsApp claims. But the metadata, information about the calls, is likely being mined by the company. WhatsApp has admitted that it is sharing information about identity and device information with Facebook, allowing it to do the dirty work in snooping on users.”
Unfortunately regardless of whether or not WhatsApp does collect data on its users, the fact of the matter is that due to the sheer number of people using its services, living without it might prove to be a bit cumbersome, especially for work or school.
Filed in . Read more about Apps, Facebook, Privacy and Whatsapp.