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WhatsApp violates user privacy?

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Supriya Rai
New Update

NEW DELHI, INDIA: The findings of a new report may may cause some distress to millions of WhatsApp users. WhatsApp, one of the most widely used apps in the world, breaches international privacy laws because it forces users to provide access to their entire address book, Canadian and Dutch data protection authorities said, according to a report on NDTV.

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The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) and the Dutch Data Protection Authority, in a joint report released on Monday, said the app violated privacy laws. "This lack of choice contravenes (Canadian and Dutch) privacy law. Both users and non-users should have control over their personal data and users must be able to freely decide what contact details they wish to share with WhatsApp," said Jacob Kohnstamm, chairman of the Dutch Data Protection Authority.

WhatsApp also has been reported to have had several security loopholes earlier. In May 2011, there was a security hole reported in WhatsApp, which left user accounts open for hijacking.

In September 2011, a new version of the WhatsApp Messenger application for iPhones was released. In this new version, the developer has closed a number of critical security holes that allowed forged messages to be sent and messages from any WhatsApp user to be read.

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On January 6, 2012, an unknown hacker published a website (WhatsAppStatus.net) which made it possible to change the status of an arbitrary whatsapp user, as long as the phone number was known.

However, despite al these issues, WhatsApp Messenger remains hugely popular among users. In addition to text messaging, users can send each other images, video, and audio media messages. The app is available for Android, BlackBerry OS, iOS, Series 40, Symbian, and Windows Phone. The app is free for the first year and then users have to pay to continue the services. Users apparently send over a billion messages on WhatsApp everyday.

(With inputs from Wikipedia)

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