Hoax messages and fake images always find their way to break out in internet. No matter how hard you try to ignore them, they would still find their way to reach you again and again. But instead of ignoring them, it is our duty to run a fact check on such messages and ask the sender of such messages to immediately stop sharing it. Today, this one hoax message has been swirling around in my various whatsapp group chats and hence I have decided to put a fullstop for once and for all. Here is the message.
Hi everyone.
If you accepted the recent changes in whatsapp terms and conditions.
Go to settings – account and uncheck share my information.
It enables facebook to access your all phone data.
So do it unchecked
The first thing that struck my mind was what on earth can make Facebook want to access our phone’s data. Second thing, what is the authenticity of this message ! ! Let me help you a bit with it. Nowhere it is written that Facebook will be accessing your phone’s data. Not even in Whatsapp. Check out this screenshot.
It is clearly stated that our numbers won’t be getting shared on our Facebook profile. The purpose of linking your Whatsapp account with Facebook profile is only so as to improve your ad viewing experience. Through this update, you will be seeing relevant ads which will be interesting for you and won’t annoy you much.
But some people are going gaga over this hoax message and spreading false rumors. Frankly, it is our duty to introspect such messages which are usually sent by unknown people. It is always advisable to never disable a feature without knowing its real meaning. Such activities can compromise your phone’s security which can indeed help someone else hack into your phone.
We should understand the fact that it was Whatsapp who came up with this update and asked for the PERMISSION which people like fraudsters and hackers don’t really do much. And if we look closely into this matter, we all know tgat Mark Zuckerberg owns Whatsapp and hence if Facebook had to hack into our phone or our Whatsapp account, it wouldn’t have asked for permissions. If they had wished to hack into our Whatsapp account, they wouldn’t have given us the option to DISABLE this feature.
This feature is only for those people who don’t want anything to be linked with their Facebook account. People who don’t want Facebook to show them relevant ads which now entirely depends upon the user’s activity. Facebook wants to improve their user experience. They want to show better relevant ads.
There is this one new feature about this update which is grabbing the eyeballs that helps you to prioritize your news feed. The efficiency of this new feature depends upon the chats on your Whatsapp account. No they won’t look into your chats but will analyse the number of messages exchanged with every individual in your Whatsapp account and will accordingly show their posts on your news feed.
Now we are no one to command you what to do and what NOT to do. But it is our duty as Responsible Media/News Publishing House to help you know what is the actual fact. We want you to know everything about this new feature and why you should not forward such random hoax messages without doing a fact check.
“By coordinating more with Facebook, we’ll be able to do things like track basic metrics about how often people use our services and better fight spam on WhatsApp. And by connecting your phone number with Facebook’s systems, Facebook can offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them. We won’t post or share your WhatsApp number with others, including on Facebook, and we still won’t sell, share, or give your phone number to advertisers.” Whatsapp said.
Spreading hoax messages like these is no way less than spreading baseless messages like ‘TYPE GOD AND WITHIN 10 SECONDS SOMETHING GOOD WILL HAPPEN TO YOU’. We all know that there is nothing good that can happen to us if we keep on using FACEBOOK and Whatsapp like this.
If you have some more relevant information regarding this topic, please feel comfortable to share it with us in the comment section below.