SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Global messaging service WhatsApp says it will start sharing the phone numbers of its users with Facebook, its parent company. That means WhatsApp users could soon start seeing more targeted ads on the social network. The move is a subtle but significant shift for WhatsApp, which has promised to guard the privacy of its 1 billion users around the world. WhatsApp is giving users a limited time to opt out of sharing information with Facebook. It also says Facebook won’t share the numbers with anyone else. Facebook, which bought WhatsApp for $21.8 billion in 2014, will employ the phone numbers internally to identify WhatsApp users so it can show them targeted ads on Facebook – but not on WhatsApp itself, which will remain ad-free.
