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> We use your phone number to connect you with friends and family. Beyond that, we never collect, store or use any personal information and never show you ads.
by lelandfe 5y ago
> We use your phone number to connect you with friends and family. Beyond that, we never collect, store or use any personal information and never show you ads. Never. For real.
From their homepage. Contact Info and Contacts sharing are inherent to this app, it seems. It's worth noting that "beyond that, we never collect [more personal information]" is pretty clearly incorrect, since they do at least also collect contacts.
Their Privacy Policy[0] also does not inspire confidence:
> We may share personal data we get with service providers who help us provide our Services
We're not selling your data, we're sharing it.
Which service providers? What are their policies around my data?
> We may transfer your personal data to service providers, advisors, potential transactional partners, or other third parties in connection with the consideration, negotiation, or completion of a corporate transaction or proceeding in which we are acquired by or merged with another company or we sell, liquidate, or transfer all or a portion of our business or assets
We're not selling your data, we're transferring it.
This clause esp. makes me loath to sign up, since all this good will around privacy protections goes away in a sale. Given that this was made by WhatsApp devs, perhaps they understand the value of data...
[0] https://www.halloapp.com/privacy/ https://www.halloapp.com/privacy/
- egberts1 5y agoYep. I concur. Not necessary to have a phone support (such as your entire address book/contacts or your identity/MyCard) fot social indexing in these days and ages. As Signal App have adequately demonstrated that.
- vineyardmike 5y ago> We're not selling your data, we're transferring it. To be fair, if they get purchased or otherwise change hands, you'd want the data transferred and not deleted or siloed so it can't be used for its intended purpose. > in which we are acquired by or merged with another company or we sell, liquidate, or transfer all or a portion of our business or assets. This reads to me like "if we or our product become part of something else, that something else is now us". Only the most aggressive reading... "we sell... all or a portion of our assets" can be read as them selling your data for profit. Does that mean they won't? No, but the terms look like they're either hiding it well or it isn't their intention. I don't have great trust in tech companies, but I have some faith when the marketing is predicated on privacy, that a sale would ruin their reputation.
- lelandfe 5y agoI don't see that as an "aggressive" interpretation of the words – that's the actual provision in the policy. There's a lot in that sentence, let's reduce it to the relevant stuff: > We may transfer your personal data to [third parties] in connection with... a corporate transaction or... we are acquired by or merged with another company or we sell, liquidate, or transfer all or a portion of our business or assets I don't understand why a company preaching privacy wouldn't want to show good faith by making an ironclad privacy policy around the same.
- nickff 5y agoMaking the privacy policy more specific than necessary will expose them to many frivolous lawsuits.
- princevegeta89 5y ago"We're not selling your data, we're sharing it" Hmmm what is that supposed to mean? If they're sharing it they're doing it for a business reason right
- lelandfe 5y agoMy point is: their homepage says that beyond a phone number, HalloApp will "never collect, store or use any personal information" But their privacy policy says something different.
- charcircuit 5y agoThe first example that came to my mind is that they share the data with AWS. Nowadays it's pretty normal to use other people's computers to run your service.