For the first time in four years and since being acquired by Facebook, WhatsApp is updating its terms and conditions, as well as its privacy policy.

Part of this update includes WhatsApp sharing your account information with Facebook to, among other things, provide better targeted ads. What information is being shared with Facebook? The updated WhatsApp FAQ page says that the phone number you used to sign up for WhatsApp with will be shared, as well as the last time you used the service. Facebook will not be able to see your messages, photos or other media you share. And any information will not be publicly visible to anyone using Facebook.

The German data protection agency has ordered Facebook to stop collecting user data from its WhatsApp messenger app and delete any data it has already received.

The social network announced in August that it would begin sharing data from its 1 billion-plus user base, including phone numbers, from WhatsApp users with Facebook for the purpose of targeted ads. It gave users the option of opting out of the data being used for advertising purposes, but did not allow them to opt out of the data sharing between WhatsApp and Facebook.

The Facebook-owned WhatsApp will give its users’ personal information to its parent company and plans to make it easier for businesses to contact subscribers. WhatsApp claims the changes won’t endanger privacy.

WhatsApp published a statement as part of a revision of its terms and privacy policy. “By coordinating more with Facebook, we'll be able to do things like track basic metrics about how often people use our services and better fight spam on WhatsApp. And by connecting your phone number with Facebook's systems, Facebook can offer better friend suggestions and show you more relevant ads if you have an account with them,” said the California-based company.

Skype, WhatsApp, and Yelp have accessed my contacts list data thousands and times, and none of the companies are sure why.

The companies -- Microsoft, which owns Skype; and Facebook, which owns WhatsApp; and Yelp -- were all unable to explain why their apps had accessed the contacts list in my Android phone so often. BlackBerry's Priv, the smartphone maker's debut Android phone running "Lollipop" 5.1.1, comes with an app, dubbed DTEK, which monitors and notifies users when data has been accessed, when, and for how long, including a user's location, contacts, text messages, camera, and microphone.

Users of WhatsApp for Web could easily have their security and devices compromised, security researchers have claimed. The web interface has a security issue that lets hackers take over computers using just a phone number and a simple message.

All of the users could be vulnerable to the exploit, according to the security firm. Hackers would just send them a small, apparently innocent contacts file — which, when opened, would allow hackers to run malicious code and leave them open to being hit by code that could take control of their computer, watching what they are doing, or use it to spread viruses.

According to CEO and co-founder of WhatsApp messenger Kum Yang, the number of monthly active users messaging application mark of 800 million people in April 2015.

Present owner says the number of WhatsApp users will exceed 1 billion. In the last few days WhatsApp users actively send each other messages that the service will soon be paid. To use free messenger and become a frequent user, it is necessary to send a warning to ten people from your contact list. “Jim Balsamic, CEO WhatsApp” is mentioned as the author of the message. Security experts recommended to ignore spam.

Security experts warned about a new attack on users of WhatsApp messenger. Under the guise of the web version of messenger is distributed Trojan. Attackers send out e-mail letters of invitation to download the desktop application WhatsApp Web, issued by the manufacturer at the end of January 2015.

Referring to users, scammers use social engineering techniques. Messages contain a link, supposedly leading to the official website of WhatsApp. Actually clicking the user goes to another site where download the executable file WhatsAppInstall.exe. Under this name hides a Trojan Downloader.

According to a Dutch developer, the privacy settings in WhatsApp are broken. By adding the phone number of user to its open source tool is able to track any change of profile picture, privacy settings or statuses from any user.

The open-source tool, can retrieve anything like the user's profile photos and status messages. It can also retrieve the user's timeline to show when he or she was actually online. The software has to be installed on a server and includes a web interface that continuously tracks the targeted user. The developer of the tool states he has created the software to demonstrate how broken the privacy settings in WhatsApp are.

Over the past few months, AdaptiveMobile has tracked an increase of spam complexity on messaging apps, such as WhatsApp, in the United States, Europe and India, and expects these attacks to continue through 2015.

These campaigns have methodologies and content similar to SMS messaging abuse threats, providing evidence that the criminal groups are now also targeting messaging apps as service providers have succeeded in reducing levels of SMS spam. In particular, criminals are using WhatsApp to target users with text spam. Recent campaigns targeting WhatsApp users include investment spam messages sent from United States numbers to Europe.

A Vulnerability has been discovered in the wildly popular messaging app WhatsApp, which allows anyone to remotely crash WhatsApp just by sending a specially crafted message. Two India based independent security researchers demonstrated the WhatsApp Message Handler vulnerability to one of our security analyst.

The worried impact of the vulnerability is that the user who received the specially crafted message will have to delete his/her whole conversation and start a fresh chat, because opening the message keeps on crashing WhatsApp unless the chat is deleted completely. What makes it more serious is that one needs to delete entire chat with the person they are chatting to in order to get back whatsapp work in normal.