Hi all, particularly those using whatsapp.
I started a thread on two other lists yesterday so many of you will be
already familiar with the below. However, I thought Id post it anyway for
the information of anyone who has not seen these messages and received/or
will receive a message on their whatsapp app with the message that we must
agree to new terms and conditions by September 25th.
Having checked that the message I had "blindly accepted", as it says below,
about accepting the new whatsapp terms and conditions was genuine, I seemed
to be left with a virtually unusable whatsapp. The terms and conditions
which have to be agreed to before September 25th refer to allowing access to
one's Facebook account and I do not have one. It appears that, having
agreed to the terms and conditions, whatsapp was searching for my Facebook
account and crashing when it couldn't find one, at least, that is my
assumption.
The reason I believe this is because when I unticked the share My Account
Info option in accounts settings, as outlined in Cearbhall's message below,
whatsapp seemed to return to normal, fingers crossed.
Anyway, here is the all-important info sourced by Cearbhall:
How To Lock Down Your WhatsApp Privacy
How To Stop WhatsApp From Sharing Your Phone Number With Facebook
For those of us who travel abroad (or who have friends and family who do),
WhatsApp is a lifesavergone are the days of purchasing a burner flip phone
in a foreign country to keep in touch with our loved ones. Back in 2014
Facebook purchased WhatsApp, with one of the provisions being that WhatsApp
and Facebook wouldn't share personal info. But WhatsApp recently announced
in a blog post that it will begin sharing some of your personal info, such
as your phone number, with Facebook. If you dont want WhatsApp sharing your
phone number with Facebook, dont fret: theres still time for you to stop
it.
But before we get into that, first a few important things about what
WhatsApp's updated user agreement actually does, and what it doesnt do. In
the blog post, WhatsApp notes that theyre rolling out whats called
end-to-end encryption, which means that when you send a message, only you
and the recipient can read it. Nobody else will read your messagesnot
WhatsApp, not Facebook, nobody. Also, WhatsApp wont post your number or
messages to Facebook, nor will they sell your phone number to advertisers.
So what will sharing your number with Facebook do? Basically, offer you
better friend suggestions and more relevant ads and fight spam. But if
thats not really your thing, you can decline to share your number with
Facebook (for now). According to Motherboard, there are two ways to opt out
of this feature. Theyre actually pretty simple and dont involve any kind
of phone voodoo.
1. Dont agree to the terms of service right away
We all do ithit that little check box next to the I have read and agree to
the terms and conditions disclaimer. Do any of us ever actually read the
terms and conditions? No. But on WhatsApp, if you dont automatically agree
to the terms and actually read them, youll find that theres a check box in
the details that reads Share my WhatsApp account information with
Facebook. Uncheck that box, then agree to the terms, then you should be
good to go.
2. Opt out
If you didnt read the terms and just blindly accepted, its not too
lateyou can still opt out. Go to your settings menu and hit the account
tab. There, there should be a box that says Share my account info. Uncheck
that, and voilà! No sharing your number with Facebook.
- Taken from:
http://www.bustle.com/articles/180973-how-to-stop-whatsapp-from-sharing-your
-phone-number-with-facebook
Paul
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