Have you ever wondered the reason your WhatsApp subscription is always extended whenever it’s near the expiry date? I have been asked this question so many times that I had to write about it.

Well, this is no surprise that Facebook is the largest social networking site in existence and is expanding every second. With almost touching 1.5 billion in 2nd quarter of 2015, it’s a mind-boggling fact how Facebook is now bigger than some of the countries. To add, Facebook became a lot larger by acquiring WhatsApp, a messaging application that has its own half-a-billion user strength (at the time of acquiring).

As of now on September 2015, it has touched 0.9 million, hence making Facebook and whatsApp to have an approximate combined strength of 2.3 billion which is the size of an average continent, per se. Facebook paid a huge $19 billion to acquire whatsApp by saying that “not many companies can create a network of 1 billion users” – which will be achieved soon, he added and look at it now, 0.90 billion and counting

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Having said that, talking financially, since WhatsApp has vowed to not to sell ads, how exactly is WhatsApp profitable for Facebook?

This is one question that hits people’s head but they don’t give much importance to it. Well, there’s a harsh reality behind it. Oh no, it’s not uncovering the question that if Jon Snow will return in season 6 (Game of Thrones for the uninitiated), I tell you. Anyhoo, the answer to this is: By selling the users out. Data mining.

Facebook is already a gigantic source of information, Facebook knows about our friends more than we do. From their birthday to their likes/dislikes, their favourite band in 2012 to their favourite rap group in 2015. Everything. Doesn’t that scare you a bit? Facebook is a data mining heaven, with unbelievable amount of data at their server room which, make no mistake, all provided by us, happily.

Statiscally speaking: Facebook has more than 300 petabytes of data which we are increasing every second. From our location based check-ins to a staggering 250 billion photos posted on the site, Facebook knows how we look and possibly how our family look as well. Because of around 15 billion messages sent per day, Facebook even knows even if we are in relationship or not and what are our dirty little secrets (unless you are Batman because obviously Batman is BATMAN), It’s an awful lot of information in the hands of just one site.

It’s not too far when Facebook will leverage all their data and use it against us, wherever required. Even if we stop using it today (which is as unlikely as DJ Khalid saying anything else than his name in a song), they will still have a lot of information about us.

For example, a recent data article by Facebook’s data science team show how they can predict about a user is about to change his relationship status. The insights are from wall posts, messages and timelines post and amount of likes you get from a single person. The question is, what else can they predict?! In a way it means no privacy at all. Well that means bad news for guys, no more brunette crushes, before you start liking her, Facebook might give her the details about another creep and you will end up in her blocking list. On a serious note, if you’re interested in this article further, then you can READ it here..

I am sure you all have read it somewhere that all the time when you’re logged in through your Facebook app, it tracks every other activity you perform on your smartphone. Have you ever imagined that how ridiculously it can be used against us? As if selling our data to people wasn’t enough.

Another recent study highlights that it is very much possible to accurately predict a range of atmost sensitive and personal attributes we relate ourselves daily, simply by analyzing the ‘Likes’ we have clicked on Facebook. The important study has been done by taking a sample out of the population while yielded positive results for up to 85% people. It’s a work conducted by researchers at Cambridge University and Microsoft Research which shows how the patterns of Facebook ‘Likes’ can very accurately predict your sexual innuendos, our satisfaction level, a bit about our intelligence, current emotional stability/status, views on religion, alcohol and drug use, relationship status or future status and political views among many others. Some new reports have also given us another idea about level of insights Facebook has that can be used very intelligently. Features like searching of ‘friends that like/recommended restaurants’ or even ‘friends of friends who also like cooking’ has given some amazing accurate results.

While we’re on this, I like to add that human psychology is to NOT to share everything on Facebook, maybe in Facebook messaging messages we tend to give a lot of information but not AS much as we do on WhatsApp. Isn’t it scary to know that all the messages you have shared, ever, has been backup by WhatsApp’s servers? All the plans you made, all the sexual fantasies you shared, all the girls you ever called a b*tch, everything. Reason being it can be tempting to use all the advance technologies to use this data to mine and sell it to important people that can be government or individual politicians. Otherwise why would Facebook spend such a huge amount?

It’s beyond imagination the power that adds to Facebook’s data analytics capabilities. As I mentioned WhatsApp’s data would reveal who we are sending messages to and how often we do that. It’s like a realm that has all the infinity stones together. Even though Facebook states that the two companies will run independently of each other, without interfering in either’s work, I think it is very naïve to believe that this will continue for long or as a matter of fact it holds any truth. For a start, it would make sense to integrate the WhatsApp messaging functionality with Facebook’s own messenger app, otherwise they would run two competing products. Or even if not, Facebook has all the data in its hand, anyway.

While we are at this, I’d like to gather your attention towards a class-action lawsuit Facebook’s been hit with. The accusation is that Facebook is violating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act by scanning and exploiting the content of private messages sent via the Facebook platform without prior consent by users. Although this related to just advertising companies but don’t you think that they can go a step further and start selling to more powerful people, perhaps people we don’t want to have it? Is this maybe a little taste of what’s to come when they start doing the same with their WhatsApp data? Although if you read FAQ’s of Facebook, it explicitly says that they’re not selling our information. Maybe it’s time that we realize that it’s all just a cobweb of comfort and we are indeed keeping our enemies much closer than our friends.