Dark patterns in action. WhatsApp explained how to refuse to transfer personal information to Facebook

Yesterday, WhatsApp announced a change to two documents - the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Text of documents in Russian
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Changes in these documents are made for the first time in four years. As it is easy to guess, the changes are related to the fact that in 2014 the company WhatsApp became the property of Facebook. It's time to pay back the money spent, that is, to merge the information about your users to the new owner.

The new rules explain that WhatsApp is part of the Facebook group of companies and plans to share information with Facebook in order to “improve coordination and improve the experience of using services.” As soon as the user accepts the updated Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, WhatsApp will begin to merge his personal information into the Facebook advertising system. For example, the phone number that the user confirmed when registering with WhatsApp, as well as the time of last use. This is necessary for linking profiles and more accurate advertising targeting.

In WhatsApp, they plan to add targeted advertisements in the near future: “For example, you can receive information about the flight status in connection with the planned trip, receipts for purchased goods and services, or notices about the delivery time. Messages that you may receive with marketing content may include a suggestion about something that might interest you. ”

Facebook will certainly offer advertisers new advertising targeting options. Now targeting is carried out by 98 parameters . For example, advertisers can limit the audience to display advertising only to those users who correspond to a particular feature or their combination, for example:

• spends a lot of time at home;
• gets to work by public transport;
• preparing for the move soon;
• recently returned from a trip;
• buys food for a certain type of animal;
• buys clothes of a certain style;
• favorite TV series;
• type of internet connection;
• type of drugs purchased (allergies, colds, painkillers, etc.);
• computer experience;
• the presence of the game console;
• and 87 more targeting options ...

Facebook collects this data about users through tracking cookies, Like and Share buttons, which are installed on many sites, as well as through Facebook tracking pixels . Statistics on the visited pages is collected on all users, regardless of whether they are logged on to Facebook or not.

In general, information from the WhatsApp messenger will be a very useful addition to the database of personal data that Facebook offers to use to advertisers.

And now - the most interesting.

WhatsApp takes care of its users and has provided an easy way how to refuse to transfer personal data to Facebook. Read carefully, because before such a “simple way” you can hardly guess on your own.

Before clicking the “Accept” button to read the updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, you should click on the link under the word “Read”.



Then the text will appear on the screen, and at the bottom of the screen - the switch “Share information about my WhatsApp account with Facebook”, which is activated by default. It is necessary to uncheck or change the position of the switch.



What an intuitive way, isn't it? How do you think, how many users decide to click on the “Read” button to familiarize themselves with the text of the new Privacy Policy and find out the fact that WhatsApp, it turns out, is going to share its private information with Facebook? Will it be 1%? Or 0.1%? Or, more realistically, 0.01%?

This implementation of the interface is fully consistent with the definition of dark patterns - computer interfaces specifically designed to trick users. These are not design mistakes or “bad interfaces”, quite the contrary. This is the work of very good specialists - specially designed interfaces that push the user to make the “right” choice.

That's not all. As already mentioned, the WhatsApp company takes care of its users. And therefore, provided a situation, if someone accidentally did not click on the "Read" button and did not refuse to transfer personal information to Facebook, but immediately accepted the amended terms of the agreement. Such WhatsApp users generously provide as many as 30 days to change their choice in the program settings by going to Settings > Account > Writing Account Information .



That is, after 30 days, WhatsApp users will not even have the opportunity to refuse to transfer data for promotional use!

WhatsApp repeatedly emphasizes that the data transferred to Facebook will not be published in the public domain, and the content of messages in WhatsApp is securely encrypted using end-to-end encryption. But everyone understands that only metadata will be enough for accurate advertising targeting.

WhatsApp also draws attention to one thing: if a user refuses to use personal data on Facebook for promotional purposes , they will still be transferred to Facebook.