{"id":2870,"date":"2014-02-20T10:26:45","date_gmt":"2014-02-20T15:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/?p=2870"},"modified":"2020-02-26T18:58:17","modified_gmt":"2020-02-26T14:58:17","slug":"facebook-acquires-whatsapp-consequences-for-service-users","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/facebook-acquires-whatsapp-consequences-for-service-users\/2870\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Acquires WhatsApp: Consequences for Service Users"},"content":{"rendered":"

The WhatsApp acquisition by Facebook made headlines yesterday because of the record sum paid by the social media giant for the messaging startup. That\u2019s a whopping $19 billion for a company with 450 million active users \u2013 which is almost $42 per user! Taking into account a nominal service fee of $1\/year charged by WhatsApp, it\u2019s quite obvious that this revenue stream can\u2019t cover the acquisition cost in the short or mid-term. Naturally, this raises an apprehension that in-app ads will eventually emerge in WhatsApp along with accompanying privacy-intrusive monitoring tools, including message scanning (think Gmail). Is it time to seek a replacement for WhatsApp?<\/p>\n

\"fb\"<\/a><\/p>\n

First, don\u2019t panic. This question is hardly urgent. \u00a0In their posts regarding the acquisition, both Facebook\u2019s head Mark Zuckerberg<\/a> and WhatsApp boss Jan Koum<\/a> stress that WhatsApp remains a separate company with its own independent policy. Jan Koum is famous for his disapproval of an ad-driven revenue model<\/a>, so we don\u2019t expect ads and analytics to emerge anytime soon.\u00a0 Of course, everything changes over time, and this situation can change as well.\u00a0 However, if you decide to disembark the WhatsApp boat, you have plenty of time to find a perfect alternative and convince your friends to switch.<\/p>\n

There are no new reasons to worry about messaging privacy<\/div>\n

Second, there are no new <\/i>reasons to worry about messaging privacy. Honestly speaking, WhatsApp was never meant to be a true confidential messaging tool; there were even multiple breaches in the past, including some attacks, which make eavesdropping possible<\/a>. Today, WhatsApp uses receive reasonable encryption, plus service owners claim that users\u2019 messages are never stored after delivery to the recipient. So don\u2019t expect Facebook data miners to dig into your message history. However, there are special tools for confidential messaging and the Facebook deal has nothing to do with WhatsApp messaging privacy. Focus more on the NSA<\/a> and similar agencies if you are worried about third parties reading your texts.<\/p>\n

So to sum this all up, there is no reason to urgently switch from WhatsApp to another mobile messaging platform. Confidential data shouldn\u2019t be sent unencrypted over standard communication channels, be it Facebook, WhatsApp or e-mail. Use dedicated security tools<\/a> to protect your data from prying eyes. The real threat to watch for in the near future is a wave of fake emails and messages<\/a> urging you to \u201cconfirm your WhatsApp account\u201d or \u201copt out of Facebook ads inside WhatsApp\u201d or something similar. Those messages will definitely contain a malicious link and clicking on it may infect your device or lead you to a phishing page trying to steal personal data from you. WhatsApp and Facebook won\u2019t send anything like this so don\u2019t fall victim to such a scam.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The WhatsApp acquisition by Facebook made headlines yesterday because of the record sum paid by the social media giant for the messaging startup. That\u2019s a whopping $19 billion for a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":2871,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[20,520],"class_list":{"0":"post-2870","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-facebook","9":"tag-whatsapp"},"hreflang":[{"hreflang":"en-ae","url":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/facebook-acquires-whatsapp-consequences-for-service-users\/2870\/"},{"hreflang":"en-in","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.in\/blog\/facebook-acquires-whatsapp-consequences-for-service-users\/2976\/"},{"hreflang":"en-us","url":"https:\/\/usa.kaspersky.com\/blog\/facebook-acquires-whatsapp-consequences-for-service-users\/3237\/"},{"hreflang":"en-gb","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/facebook-acquires-whatsapp-consequences-for-service-users\/3199\/"},{"hreflang":"x-default","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/facebook-acquires-whatsapp-consequences-for-service-users\/3832\/"},{"hreflang":"en-au","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.au\/blog\/facebook-acquires-whatsapp-consequences-for-service-users\/3832\/"},{"hreflang":"en-za","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/facebook-acquires-whatsapp-consequences-for-service-users\/3832\/"}],"acf":[],"banners":"","maintag":{"url":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/tag\/facebook\/","name":"Facebook"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2870"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15723,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2870\/revisions\/15723"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}