WhatsApp: privacy unclear, the Authority investigates

Even the WhatsApp application, a useful instant messaging service, has come under the spotlight of the Data Protection Authority in our country.
The Authority has indeed sent a communication to the Californian company that owns WhatsApp, in order to shed light on the privacy conditions observed.
In particular, it is the management of telephone numbers that is not clear to the Data Protection Authority in Italy: it is understood that by installing WhatsApp on any smartphone, the application automatically accesses the user’s address book.
This operation – necessary to check which contacts have already installed WhatsApp, so as to be able to start communicating for free via messages – however, also “fishes” all those telephone numbers not registered to the instant messaging service.
Where do these numbers extracted from the WhatsApp subscriber address book end up?
This is the main question posed by the Data Protection Authority’s office, promptly forwarded to the owners and creators of the application.
By doing so, in fact, telephone numbers of people who have never decided to use the service, not downloading it at all, would be entered into WhatsApp‘s servers.

We will therefore try to understand how this data is used, how it is stored, and for how long.
Clarification is also requested regarding the system for protecting the aforementioned data, but also the messages transmitted via WhatsApp.
It is therefore, above all, the issue concerning the telephone numbers of people who are not WhatsApp users at the same time that is drawing the Authority’s attention.
We will continue to follow the story, awaiting the response that WhatsApp’s top management will send to the Italian Authority.