UH-HUH: WhatsApp says new biometric features are nothing to worry about.

A Facebook account is not required to use WhatsApp, but whenever the update goes live, users must agree to grant Facebook access to metadata including IP addresses, user location, battery level, and IMEI numbers, or the permanent identifier associated with a smartphone.

“Trust us” — WhatsApp has gone on the defensive, trying to emphasize that Facebook cannot read users’ communications, nor does it keep logs of location data or private messages. But Facebook hasn’t been clear what it intends to use the collected metadata for. It could potentially be used to target users in advertisements. User data collected by Facebook has been misused in the past, such as to hide housing advertisements from users in poorer locales or target political ads discouraging certain demographics from voting.

Facebook hasn’t earned a whole lot of trust (cough, cough), and WhatsApp’s privacy-minded co-founders left shortly after selling to Facebook.