WhatsApp CEO tries to quell privacy fears

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Facebook’s high-profile purchase of mobile messaging service WhatsApp for $19 billion last month has sent privacy regulators into a tizzy; groups in both the U.S. and Europe have begun campaigns to probe how Facebook’s privacy standards will affect WhatsApp user base. The main worry is that Facebook will compromise the private information of WhatsApp’s near-450 million users as the social network’s privacy practices are much less restrictive than the messaging app’s. WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum has now come out publicly to decry the global rumors that his software’s privacy rules will be compromised by its collaboration with Facebook.

VISUAL CONTEXT: FACEBOOK PRIVACY

Facebook’s privacy practices have been under fire for years; as the largest social network in the world, Facebook has had a difficult time stemming the flood of complaints from privacy advocates who claim that it uses big chunks of personal data without revealing to the user that it is doing so. It is well known that Facebook uses information such as a user’s location and likes to attract advertisers, and many argue that the social network makes its privacy settings so obscure that younger users — or simply less apt ones — are disabled from properly setting their privacy codes. But WhatsApps policies are starkly opposite. Part of the allure of WhatsApp for many users is its dedication to protecting user information. The worry that the data of its millions of users will now be governed by Facebook’s wishy-washy privacy standards is what has sent privacy advocates into overdrive in the U.S.; the Electronic Privacy Information Center and the Center for Digital Democracy have both petitioned the Federal Trade Commission to halt Facebook’s purchase of WhatsApp until measures can be determined for how WhatsApp’s user data will be integrated with Facebook. In the wake of several weeks of worry and much noise from privacy advocates, Koum has used the WhatsApp blog to “set the record straight” and assure users that privacy remains of the utmost importance to the company:

Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA, and we built WhatsApp around the goal of knowing as little about you as possible: You don’t have to give us your name and we don’t ask for your email address. We don’t know your birthday. We don’t know your home address. We don’t know where you work. We don’t know your likes, what you search for on the internet or collect your GPS location. None of that data has ever been collected and stored by WhatsApp, and we really have no plans to change that.

Whether or not Koum will be able to keep his promise is something that will be closely scrutinized as the tech world has narrowed its focus onto privacy and access to personal information in the wake of Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks and a few high-profile security breaches that compromised millions of user’s credit card information earlier this year. And whether or not a single blog post from Koum will placate the privacy advocates is another question. But it is likely that Koum and WhatsApp will suffer some further probing — in the U.S. and elsewhere — as the deal fleshes out.