A few weeks ago, WhatsApp updated its application adding an update to the terms and conditions to be able to use its application. In these terms we could read how the company would start sharing our phone number and everything we do on Facebook with third party companies so that they could contact us through these two communication channels. WhatsApp allowed us to temporarily decline the authorization as we reported a couple of days ago, if we do not accept the new terms we will not be able to continue using the most used messaging application in the world.
Germany has been the first country that is not willing to have WhatsApp users in the country forced to give their data to Facebook and has forced the company to stop collecting the data to which it has had access so far and to erase all the information it currently has. The Hamburg court affirms that the company has not duly notified the 35 million WhatsApp users in the country of the change in terms and that it is what it will do with all the information it collects. According to the court, Facebook has to request this permission in advance and explaining well what the data collection and its subsequent management entail.
Shortly after investing just over $ 19.000 billion in the WhatsApp comparison, Facebook announced that it would never sell personal information about users and that it would not change its privacy policies. This ad is the typical one used by all large companies when they buy smaller ones since they never do it as a social purpose but rather the intention is to take advantage of it economically. Nothing is free on the internet and we all know it although some people find it difficult to accept it.
Europe and especially Germany have always been characterized by worrying excessively about the privacy of residents of the European Union and where it has always clashed with Google and Facebook as well as other tech companies to try to prevent this abuse. But not only in Europe have alarms sounded, since in the United States the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has accused Facebook of lying and violating the rules of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Something good they do from Germany
I do not use Facebook, it seems vomiting to me and now for a few days, neither whatsapp, but it seems to me something really worrying that people who are imprisoned and handcuffed to these types of applications do not realize that companies like this make them their puppets.