All the data WhatsApp and Instagram send to Facebook

At the start of 2021, a poorly communicated privacy policy change spurred a mass exodus from Facebook-owned WhatsApp. During the week after the announcement – which saw WhatsApp demand users accept a new policy or delete their accounts – downloads of rival Signal surged by 35 times to 8.8 million causing its servers to crash. Others switched to Telegram, which was downloaded 11m times during the week following the privacy update.The uproar came after millions of people misinterpreted WhatsApp’s new terms to mean more data would be shared with its parent Facebook. This wasn’t the case: the update to WhatsApp’s policy covers the way people communicate with businesses, and the data shared with Facebook remains the same.Yet the policy change and resulting backlash highlighted the large amounts of data WhatsApp can collect since its 2014 acquisition by Facebook. Spoiler: it is still a lot. But six months later WhatsApp is still by far the most popular messaging app, with two billion users.Other Facebook-owned companies collect and share even more data. Instagram’s privacy policy is almost identical to Facebook’s, and the two can freely exchange information to serve you advertising.So, what data does Facebook actually get from WhatsApp and Instagram, and…
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