Whatsapp and Facebook Collaboration

Whatsapp and Facebook Collaboration

Whatsapp will ONLY share phone number but that is all Facebook needs.

Ever since WhatsApp announced changes in its privacy policy and its decision to share the phone numbers of WhatsApp users with Facebook, which incidentally is the parent company for the service, there is a lot of brouhaha over what it means for users. Also, now when the initially din has subsided, across the world people, government organisations, watchdogs and everyone with slightest interest in privacy and the internet and taking a more thorough look at the new WhatsApp policy. India too is doing it, albeit in the Delhi High Court where a petition has been filed against WhatsApp over its move to share data with Facebook.

The case is still ongoing and the it will be interesting to see how the court moves in this matter, particularly given the fact that in India we don't have any explicit laws for privacy protection. But we do know how WhatsApp is defending itself. The company is saying that it is going to share with Facebook only the phone number of the user and no other data, because it doesn't have that data. It says that all communications -- chats, voice calls, funny photo forwards... everything -- is encrypted on WhatsApp and only users have access to their data. No one else, not even WhatsApp can look into this data.

Although probably accurate -- we have to trust WhatsApp here -- this argument is also little disingenuous. WhatsApp is making it look like that sharing a phone number -- it's just the phone, say its representatives -- is not a big deal and is not a privacy issue. But that is not accurate. In the world where a smartphone, which has a phone number connected to a WhatsApp account, is at the centre of our lives, the phone number is the key that unlocks everything.