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Comment by onewaystreet | Hacker News Reader

The post says the exact opposite of the title:

> Even as we coordinate more with Facebook in the months ahead, your encrypted messages stay private and no one else can read them. Not WhatsApp, not Facebook, nor anyone else. We won’t post or share your WhatsApp number with others, including on Facebook, and we still won't sell, share, or give your phone number to advertisers.

Edit: That paragraph relates to your WhatsApp number. It is true that they do plan to share your phone number that you signed up with. You can opt-out though: https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/26000016

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> You can opt-out though: https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/26000016

This is a dark pattern. In fact, once you say "Agree" you only have 30 days to opt-out.

> After you agree to our updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, you will have an additional 30 days to make this choice by going to Settings > Account > Share my account info in the app.

I can't see such an option.

from the page >The Facebook family of companies will still receive and use this information for other purposes such as improving infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities.

So even if you do opt out,it really does not make a difference.

[Edit] : More excerpts from the TOS(https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/#privacy-policy-information-y...)

>Account Information. Your phone number, profile name and photo, online status and status message, last seen status, and receipts may be available to anyone who uses our Services, although you can configure your Services settings to manage certain information available to other users.

> Facebook and the other companies in the Facebook family also may use information from us to improve your experiences within their services such as making product suggestions (for example, of friends or connections, or of interesting content) and showing relevant offers and ads. However, your WhatsApp messages will not be shared onto Facebook for others to see. In fact, Facebook will not use your WhatsApp messages for any purpose other than to assist us in operating and providing our Services.

The only guarantee that seems to be given is the the messages will not be shared onto Facebook( It can still be used by them) and the [...]assist us in operating and providing our Services,I would like to see what Whatsapp describes as 'providing our Services',if they one day define 'providing contextual ads and product suggestions' as their Service we really have no option here.

Also >New ways to use WhatsApp. We will explore ways for you and businesses to communicate with each other using WhatsApp, such as through order, transaction, and appointment information, delivery and shipping notifications, product and service updates, and marketing

This shows that once businesses onboard on Whatsapp (looking at it as wannabe WeChat),then this becomes a part of its services thereby allowing our information to flow out too.

Yes it does, they won't connect your profiles and target ads based on your info. The paragraph you quoted reads like a standard provision to allow using Facebook's CDN/Datacentres and to integrate some of their teams (abuse/spam). Of course there's no guarantee that they won't violate the terms and still use it for ad targeting. But that's no different than before..

Interesting that the opt-out link now leads to a 444...

On the web or on the phone? It works on the web for me.

Yeah I think it might be something proxy-related on my network.

That's just clever wording.

> We won’t post or share your WhatsApp number with others, including _ON_ Facebook.

Is just saying that your number won't be visible to your facebook peeps. Which does not mean that Facebook (the company) won't get access to it.

https://www.whatsapp.com/faq/general/28030012

Third part :

> This means, for example, although some information will be shared with Facebook (such as your phone number), that information will not be seen by other people on Facebook.

Yup that's just clever wording.

This line certainly makes it sound like they are sharing your phone number with Facebook to me:

  "And by connecting your phone number with Facebook's systems, Facebook can offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them."

Yeah, just not ON Facebook.

As if we were worried that they would post our numbers to our FB friends...

And who cares about the WhatsApp number? But sharing people's phone numbers? That's disgusting...

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