WhatsApp and Facebook data sharing – How to opt out

When Facebook bought Whatsapp they promised everyones data would be entirely private, but, here we are!

To cut a long story short, everything you do on Whatsapp will be passed over to Facebook so that they can target ads specifically to you and your tastes. It will also help their messenger platform.

Some people are saying this is fine because they don’t mind the occasional advert on Facebook when it is useful to them, others are saying it is an invasion of privacy and shouldn’t be done.

Where ever you stand, it has emerged that there is a hidden way of opting out of the terms if you wish, ensuring that no data is sent over to Facebook. But it has to be done quickly.

There are two ways you can do this, the first is simple but the second is a little more complicated.

If you haven’t yet accepted WhatsApps new T&Cs simply open the app and select the ‘read more’ option. Simply untick the ‘Share my WhatsApp account information with Facebook’ option.

If you’ve already accepted those new terms, you can still opt out – as long as it’s within 30 days. You can do that by heading to the settings menu in the app, and pressing on the account tab – there you’ll find a “share my account info” button that you can undress and revoke your permission.

It isn’t clear that opting out of the new terms will change the experience at all, either when compared with people who are still having their data shared with Facebook, or with before WhatsApp introduced the change.

WhatsApp say that the new change is meant only to help improve the ads on Facebook, so the only possible consequence is that what you see on the network might be slightly less relevant.