From: NakedSecurity
by Lee Munson
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against Facebook’s recent acquisition of WhatsApp in a deal worth $19 billion.
The privacy advocates have asked regulators to investigate the deal, and possibly even block it, due to concerns over how the social network will use the personal data of WhatsApp’s 450 million users.
EPIC and CDD’s concerns are focused around the fact that WhatsApp, a service that allows mobile users to send each other messages, had built up a solid reputation for not collecting user data for advertising purposes.
In fact, the service built its popularity on the back of a policy of only saving unsent messages, and even those are stored for just 30 days before being deleted.
The complaint states that Facebook is well known for making use of user information as part of its business model:
WhatsApp built a user base based on its commitment not to collect user data for advertising revenue. Acting in reliance on WhatsApp representations, Internet users provided detailed personal information to the company including private text to close friends. Facebook routinely makes use of user information for advertising purposes and has made clear that it intends to incorporate the data of Whats App users into the user profiling business model.
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