Since last year, Apple has been dropping bombs over other giant tech companies related and has been trying to sabotage the common practice of these apps to collect users’ data and use it for personalized ad tracking and a lot more. Apple has been trying to emerge as the ‘defender’ of users’ privacy matters and as an extended effort, it announced last month that the developers will have to provide privacy labels for their apps if they want them to be on the App Store.
These labels show three main features of an app: 1) Data used to track the user, like the information that is collected for ad tracking purposes, 2) Data linked to the user, which refers to the information that an app collects including users’ identity through their app account details, information about their device type, number, etc., users’ location, and a lot many other details, 3) Data not linked to the user, which is the information of the user that is not connected with their account.
Now, Apple has introduced the privacy labels for its iMessage app too in its recent update, and it clearly shows that in the section of ‘Data Linked to You,’ iMessage uses the user’s Contact Information which includes their email address and phone number, their Search history, and their Identifiers which include their device ID.
WhatsApp’s ‘Data Linked to You’ section is full of information that inadvertently goes to Facebook.
If we look at WhatsApp’s ‘Data Linked to You’ section, we will see that in the Analytics section, it collects all the information about the user’s purchase history, location, phone number, other account content, identifiers like user ID and device ID, usage data, and diagnostics data. The list does not end here.
In the section of App functionality, WhatsApp also collects the user’s payment info, email address, phone number, contacts, all the user’s content, and product usage interaction details too.
WhatsApp says that it is necessary to collect all this information to provide a reliable global communication service. It also says that it is the company’s principle to minimize the categories of data that they collect and restrict the access of other connected apps like Instagram, Facebook Messenger, etc. So, according to WhatsApp, when users share their contact lists with the app to help them deliver their messages, WhatsApp does not share these lists with other connected apps, including Facebook for its personal use.
But the fact that Facebook owns WhatsApp is there, and everyone knows that Facebook has an insatiable hunger for users’ data and information.
Here comes the role of Metadata.
Metadata is the intrinsic data of a user’s data. In WhatsApp’s privacy policy regarding its Metadata, it is mentioned that WhatsApp uses all the collected user information to operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market its services.
Since WhatsApp belongs to Facebook, so all this data that WhatsApp collects is shared with its family of companies. WhatsApp can receive information from them too. And its family apps can use the users’ information that WhatsApp passes on for their own various purposes.
Although WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted, so they will not be shared on Facebook. But the metadata lets Facebook ‘hog’ on all the information about the user’s friends, connections, their shopping preferences, any other interesting content to eventually target them with personal ads.
I’m Ava Paul, an experienced news website author with a special focus on the entertainment section. Over the past five years, I have worked in various positions of media and communication at World Stock Market. My experience has given me extensive knowledge in writing, editing, researching and reporting on stories related to the entertainment industry.
