The important part from the article is : <i>"until there is a clearer understanding of how the company intends to use the personal data of WhatsApp’s 450 million users"</i><p>FB would be drooling over all the messages, pics & videos on Whatsapp. For person-to-person communication, I prefer a paid app over an ad-supported free one. If I wanted the latter, there are no shortage of options.
I wonder how Whatsapp spells out the usage of personal data in their ToS.
Immediately after striking Facebook-WattsApp deal, Koum had mentioned in one of his tweets that users' privacy and security is their top concern and I hope he sticks to his guns.
Why would any privacy advocate want to block this deal? I can only see this deal being beneficial for privacy in the long run.<p>Facebook are unable to collect data from the service without changing the ToS, which will likely cause a user exodus.<p>It's going to put such a huge unrecoverable dent in Facebook's finances that it will be a significant long term disadvantage to them.<p>If you are a privacy advocate, wait until the deal completes and then jump ship and bring your friends with you.