In the light of social media giant Cambridge Analytica scandal, the privacy issue is becoming the main issue globally. And to protect itself from any backlash, social media giant owned WhatsApp came forward and said that it collects “very limited information” of its users. And “every message is end-to-end encrypted.”
While this may be correct that WhatsApp is not much involved in its people’s messages. And perhaps doesn’t share that with its parent company Facebook. But it does share “data they collect under this Payments Privacy Policy with third-party service providers including social media giant Facebook.” That is what it says under the terms and conditions that any of us agree to when we download the instant messaging application. WhatsApp also states that it not a licensed financial institution and is not liable for UPI services.
Here is the complete text:
“We share data with third-party providers and services to assist us to operate and develop Payments. To send payment guidance to PSPs, provide customer support, manage your transaction history. And keep our Services safe and secure, prevent, or otherwise address fraud, including to detect, security, safety, abuse, or other misconduct. We share data we collect under this Payments Privacy Policy with third-party service providers including Facebook.
To provide Payments to you, we share data with third-party services including PSPs, such as your registration information, device identifiers, mobile number, VPAs, the sender’s UPI PIN, and payment amount”. To recall, WhatsApp was earned by Facebook in 2014. With two hundred million-plus active peoples, Asia is the largest market for the Facebook-owned instant messaging app. The company rolled out support for Unified Payments Interface (UPI) earlier in 2018.
This is a payments platform in Asia that supports users to send money to a Virtual Payment Address (VPA). Facebook last week unveiled that it has almost twenty crore plus peoples in these countries, of which 5.62 lakh people in India. They were “potentially affected” by worldwide information leak episode involving United Kingdom-based Cambridge Analytica. A Facebook spokesperson said that while 335 people in India were directly affected by an app installation. And another 562,120 people were probably affected as friends of those users.
