Published: 25 January 2016
Facebook-owned messenger WhatsApp is making some major changes, less than a week after its overhauled its in-app costs.
The cross-platform messenger service, which boasts almost one billion active users, looks set to share your data with Facebook.
Developer Javier Santos unearthed the new option in the latest WhatsApp beta for Android. He quickly posted screenshots to his Google+ page.
"Share my WhatsApp account information with Facebook to improve my Facebook experiences," the new WhatsApp feature reads.
It's unclear exactly what information will be exchanged between the two services, but the Contact List seems an obvious starting point.
That means you're likely to see a few of your WhatsApp contacts populating your suggested Friends on Facebook.
Whether the content of your WhatsApp conversations will be used to suggest relevant Facebook Groups, or Celebrity Pages remains to be seen.
Fortunately, the latest beta also includes a new end-to-end encryption option, which the messenger promises will make your messages and media even more secure.
Finally, a new Documents section has been added to the app. This aggregates all the files you receive from your WhatsApp contacts.
These features are in testing at the moment, and might not make an appearance in the final WhatsApp update.
The news comes days after Facebook-owned WhatsApp announced it had dropped its annual 69p subscription fee.
Founder Mr Koum said the subscription model “really doesn’t work for some people” and that other cross-platform messaging apps, like Facebook Messenger, are completely free to use.
WhatsApp plans to replace the 69p charge by connecting companies directly with users via the app.
Mr Koum admitted they have not settled on a final plan yet, but as it stands, it appears WhatsApp will charge multi-national companies to conduct customer service chats and calls via WhatsApp.
For example, an airline could use the app to contact customers about a flight cancellation or upcoming delays.
WhatsApp says despite the changes, its goal remains to avoid spam and unwanted advertising within the hugely-successful app.
Facebook, which acquired WhatsApp for an eye-watering $19 billion in 2014, is already testing out the feature in its own Facebook Messenger app.
Select US companies have been given the opportunity to pay for the ability to message their customers directly via the app.
WhatsApp founders Jan Koum and Brian Acton are known for their staunch anti-advertisement policy within WhatsApp.
"We wanted to make something that wasn't just another ad clearinghouse," the pair wrote on the official WhatsApp blog.
"Advertising isn't just the disruption of aesthetics, the insults to your intelligence and the interruption of your train of thought.
"At every company that sells ads, a significant portion of their engineering team spends their day tuning data mining, writing better code to collect all your personal data, upgrading the servers that hold all the data and making sure it's all being logged and collated and sliced and packaged and shipped out... And at the end of the day the result of it all is a slightly different advertising banner in your browser or on your mobile screen.
"Remember, when advertising is involved you the user are the product. At WhatsApp, our engineers spend all their time fixing bugs, adding new features and ironing out all the little intricacies in our task of bringing rich, affordable, reliable messaging to every phone in the world.
"That's our product and that's our passion. Your data isn't even in the picture. We are simply not interested in any of it."
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