The global giants such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Amazon has been in trouble on various grounds for the past couple of months. They are severally charged with the dominance of power, practicing of monopoly business, illegal trade, and breach of collecting user’s data, and many more. It is not only the US government that is taking action against these firms, but Russia, Australia, and the UK have also joined the league.
Now, Facebook is charged with collecting a vast amount of user information and data through its WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger apps. According to Apple’s privacy labels update, the amount of data collected by Facebook is much higher when compared to Telegram and Signal. Same as the other apps, Facebook collects location details and usage data sometimes even without permission. According to Apple, Signal is one of the very few apps that does not collect any user data because it is abided by the App Store’s privacy details. While a couple of months back, Facebook had criticized the Cupertino tech firm for its inaccurate privacy labels.
App store data highlighted that when it comes to collecting user’s data, Facebook messenger stands tallest and is followed by the messaging app WhatsApp. The app gathers various range of data such as users’ purchase history, financial information, location details, contacts, phone number, email address, usage data, and many others.
Last month, the Australian regulatory body, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) have charged Facebook for gathering customer’s data without any consent. The regulator body stated that Facebook promoted a VPN for people to protect their data, but they are secretly using their information to identify targets for commercial acquisitions.
The point to be noted is that users expressed their worries over WhatsApp’s new privacy policy changes as they don’t accept that their accounts will be deleted. With this new policy change, WhatsApp is claimed to have collected data of its 400 million users in India alone.
9to5Mac in its report shared the details of all the data that WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have been collecting. Users can see all the details on their app store via iPhone. The lists include:
- Device ID
- User ID
- Advertising Data
- Purchase History
- Coarse Location
- Phone Number
- Email Address
- Contacts
- Product Interaction
- Crash Data
- Performance Data
- Other Diagnostic Data
- Payment Info
- Customer Support
- Product Interaction
- Other User Content
Facebook Messenger
- Purchase History
- Other Financial Info
- Precise Location
- Coarse Location
- Physical Address
- Email Address
- Name
- Phone Number
- Other User Contact Info
- Contacts
- Photos or Videos
- Gameplay Content
- Other User Content
- Search History
- Browsing History
- User ID
- Device ID
- Product Interaction
- Advertising Data
- Other Usage Data
- Crash Data
- Performance Data
- Other Diagnostic Data
- Other Data Types
- Browsing History
- Health
- Fitness
- Payment Info
- Photos or Videos
- Audio Data
- Gameplay Content
- Customer Support
- Other User Content
- Search History
- Sensitive Info
- iMessage
- Email address
- Phone number Search history
- Device ID
- Signal
None. (The only personal data Signal stores is your phone number, and it makes no attempt to link that to your identity.)
Telegram
- Contact Info
- Contacts
- User ID
