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Here’s how to stop WhatsApp from sharing your phone number with Facebook

By Alvin Soon - on 24 Sep 2016, 6:20am

Here’s how to stop WhatsApp from sharing your phone number with Facebook

Note: This article was first published on 26th August 2016.

WhatsApp announced that they’ll be sharing some user data, including your phone number, with parent company Facebook.

Talk about oversharing.

If you don’t want this to happen, you can prevent it. There are two ways.

If you launch the app and see a new terms of service agreement, press the ‘read more’ option instead of ‘agree.’ Uncheck the box that says, ‘Share my WhatsApp account information with Facebook.’

If you’ve already agreed to those terms, you can still go to the Settings menu, tap on Account, then uncheck the box that says, ‘Share my account info.’ You have 30 days to do this from the day you agreed to the new terms.

Facebook says that having the new user data from WhatsApp will help improve your FB experience, and WhatsApp has said that it won’t sell or share your phone number with advertisers.

But if having your phone number on Facebook doesn’t sit right with you, now you know how to opt out instead of being automatically opted in.

Tip of the hat to The Verge for the lifehack.

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