The revelation may turn out to be ironical but more than 50 percent of Americans who have utilized WhatsApp in the past six months do not have an idea of the owner of the mobile messaging platform.

As per the survey done by DuckDuckGo, which provides privacy-protecting search engine service based in the US, just more than 50% of total US citizens do not have any idea of Facebook being the owner of the WhatsApp.

“We randomly selected 1,297 US adults (not just DuckDuckGo users) who are collectively demographically similar to the general population of US adults and surveyed them on August 16, 2018.

“Half of those who used WhatsApp in the past six months weren’t aware that Facebook owns WhatsApp,” said the survey.

The research also came up with the fact that almost 60 percent of those who utilized Waze in the past six months did not had any idea that Google is the owner of the app.

Waze is a Google-owned popular GPS navigation software that works on smartphones and tablet computers that provide GPS support.

“This means that a majority of Americans who are using WhatsApp and/ or Waze are doing so without realizing that all of their information, whether it be routes, travel time, messages, photos, or location data, is privy to Facebook (for WhatsApp) and Google (for Waze),” said the survey.

The reveals that the not knowing of Facebook and Google’s ownership has proved to be more alarming at a time when more and more Americans are trying to control their privacy online.

Another survey done previously revealed that DuckDuckGo found that a total of 56.9 percent of all-American adults did not know that the owner of Instagram is Facebook and 44.6 percent of them did not have any idea that the popular video streaming platform, YouTube, is owned by Google.

WhatsApp was bought by Facebook back in 2014 for a cost of USD 19 billion. But after that, both the co-founders of WhatsApp – Brian Acton and Jan Koum have quit Facebook over the reports that the company plans to monetise WhatsApp and upon other data privacy issues.

Facebook and Google were recently in the news over their misuse of user data and attempts to monetize their dominance. Facebook saw itself focused by media companies and governments around the world when the UK-based company, Cambridge Analytica scandal came to the limelight.

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