WhatsApp insists it won’t collect or store data, saying ‘Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA’
WhatsApp founder Jan Koum has insisted that the app service will “continue operating independently and autonomously” following its partnership with Facebook.
Koum said he wanted to set the record straight in a blog post, saying “I want to make sure you understand how deeply I value the principle of private communication”, adding “If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we wouldn’t have done it”.
The founder revealed that he grew up in the USSR during the 1980s, with his mother afraid to speak on the phone for fear of conversations being monitored by the KGB.
“Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA, and we built WhatsApp around the goal of knowing as little about you as possible: You don’t have to give us your name and we don’t ask for your email address. We don’t know your birthday. We don’t know your home address. We don’t know where you work. We don’t know your likes, what you search for on the internet or collect your GPS location. None of that data has ever been collected and stored by WhatsApp, and we really have no plans to change that,” Koum said.
His statement was born out of worry from users that the partnership between WhatsApp and Facebook would see more data revealed and privacy becoming a thing of the past.
Koum insists this “speculation…isn’t just baseless and unfounded, it’s irresponsible. It has the effect of scaring people into thinking we’re suddenly collecting all kinds of new data. That’s just not true, and it’s important to us that you know that.”
This comes after Koum said at Mobile World Congress that the company would not change.