Its time to say goodbye to WhatsApp and as Facebook owns it, that too and Instagram from our lives and this is so long overdue. The company has no regard and care for its users privacy and the latest news regarding how it is changing the privacy policy for WhatsApp is scary, crazy and downright wrong all at the same time. The below can be found in the revised privacy policy for WhatsApp, which will be a mandatary opt in come next month, if you want to keep using the service.

“We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings, including the Facebook Company Products.”

Facebook

Privacy International had a good thread today on Twitter about the issue:

Facebook thrives on data, it is why it makes so much money. Collect tons of information then it can sell super targeted ads to advertisers and make more money, without anything seen to the user but our privacy violated. This is exactly why Facebook and WhatsApp both publicly, and in Facebook’s case it seemed like it was panicking about what Apple is requiring developers to do regarding user tracking, finally handing over the choice to the user.

Personally so far this year I have deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts and in the case of A&T Tech, we removed our presence from both platforms in December last year. It seems on Twitter, hundreds of thousands of users are waking up to the reality of what Facebook has been doing for years and there are incredibly better platforms out there for privacy, the most secure being iMessage and Signal and Telegram to follow.

My personal advice is to do what I have done, delete Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and find a better alternative. Facebook needs users and if people leave in large numbers, the company will notice.

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