Answering your questions about WhatsApp’s Privacy Policy - We recently updated our Privacy Policy and we have received many thoughtful questions. With some of the rumors going around, we want to answer some of the common questions we have received. We go to great lengths to build WhatsApp in a way that helps people communicate privately. We want to be clear that the policy update does not affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family in any way. The changes are related to optional business features on WhatsApp, and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data.
Thought exercise: Would FB/WA have any reason not to lie? Or better put, any incentive to not lie?
Well, they can be fined for false advertising and misleading customers, at least in the EU.
And these statements may very well be true in the EU, because there they have to comply with the GDPR and have already been prohibited from sharing data with Facebook.
Obviously, if you sue for misleading customers or well, anything, you kind of want some proof for it, which you’re very unlikely to have here, so they would still be in relative safety.
I also really can’t stand these “we don’t do x, y and z” lists, because there’s an infinite number of ways that this could be twisted.
What if WhatsApp doesn’t share data with Facebook, but instead shares it with Instagram or some third-party, which then routes it towards Facebook?
Obviously, being technically correct isn’t enough to get regulators off of your ass, but yeah, that’s just one of many ways that they could still be doing things.
People often read these lists as if a person is just making examples of things that they’re not doing and then they assume that they must not either be doing similarly bad or worse things.
But Facebook can totally be doing anything that’s not on this list. For all I know, they’re selling my data on the dark web right now. (I do hope, there’s some law or their privacy policy that disallows this particular extreme, but I honestly wouldn’t know.)