Bangalore: WhatsApp, one of the most popular cross-platform applications in the world violates the international privacy laws, allege Canadian and Dutch data protection authorities as the app forces users to share their entire contact list to the service.

Currently, WhatsApp ranks as one of the world’s top five best-selling apps. It is an instant-messaging application for iPhone, Android devices and BlackBerry Smartphones, produced by California –based WhatsApp Inc, which provides a free service to foe text messaging and sends more than 1 billion messages to users around the world every day.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) and the Dutch Data Protection Authority, released a joint report on Monday, stating the app related privacy laws because users have to provide access to all phone numbers in their address book including both users and non-users of the app.

“The investigation revealed that users of WhatsApp, apart from iPhone users who have iOS 6 software, do not have a choice to use the app without granting access to their entire address book. The address book contains phone numbers of both users and non-users”, said Jacob Johnstamm, chairman of the Dutch Data Protection Authority.

The two agencies also pointed the fact that WhatsApp relies on a user’s phone to populate the contacts list of the instant messenger. Rather than deleting the contacts of the non-users, WhatsApp retains the contacts, in an unreadable hash form.

In response to the concerns raised by the two agencies, WhatsApp has committed to make changes to protect users’ privacy, as per the investigations. As a stepping stone, in September 2012, it introduced encryption for its mobile messaging service.

The Dutch agency has remarked that it would continue to monitor WhatsApp and impose penalties if privacy issues are continued.

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