How WhatsApp earns money?

    You are one among the 900 million users who is using WhatsApp. (This number is increasing every second). WhatsApp has earlier announced that it is free for first year and will be charging for next years but abounded that idea for Indian users for various reasons and continues its service for free.

Have you ever got this question in you? Why WhatsApp is free and we are not charged for using it? Why they provide this service for free, how they earn money?

    Here goes the answer for it, social networks like Facebook, twitter, Instagram etc... comes under data mining companies. These companies collect personal information from their uses and store it in their databases. Yes, WhatsApp also comes under this category. The personal information stored by WhatsApp is sold to MNCs.  This info is used by the MNCs to show you ads based on you interest. How can they sell my information without my knowledge, this is illegal and I’m going to take legal action on them for this? No, you can’t because you have already accepted the terms and conditions before installing the apps in your smartphone and that’s a dead lock J. We don’t care in reading the terms for any of the applications we install and some don’t read even the first line, you should agree with me in this point.

    Sometimes when you open your Facebook page you may note some advertisements of gadgets at low price with discounts which you longed to get. Let’s take you are planning to get a pen drive and Facebook shows ad of pendrive at discounts. How do Facebook know that you wished to get pendrive, you may thing it is coincidence but it is not. somewhere or someday you may have sent a message in WhatsApp about it to your friend. WhatsApp scans your message and displays ads related to that in your fb page. :-0 . Don’t worry your information is only used for it.

Some words from WhatsApp Terms of service  

* If you submit Personally Identifiable Information to us through the WhatsApp Site, or WhatsApp Service, then we use your personal information to operate, maintain, and provide to you the features and functionality of the WhatsApp Site and WhatsApp Service.

*The WhatsApp Site and Service are hosted in the United States and are intended for and directed to users in the United States. (This means US scans our messages?)

Read WhatsApp Terms and conditions here