San Francisco, October 19: It may sound bizarre but nearly 50 per cent of Americans who have used WhatsApp in the last six months have no idea who owns the popular mobile messaging platform.

According to a survey by DuckDuckGo, the US-based privacy-protecting search engine, just over half of US citizens (50.42 per cent) do not know WhatsApp is owned by Facebook.

"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. Notice Issued via WhatsApp in PDF Format Is Valid, Says Bombay High Court.

The findings also showed that nearly 60 per cent of those who used Waze in the past six months didn't know that Google owns Waze. Waze is a popular GPS navigation software. It works on smartphones and tablet computers that have GPS support.

"This means that a majority of Americans who are using WhatsApp and/or Waze are doing so without realising 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.

According to the survey, the lack of awareness over Facebook and Google's reach is even more alarming as more and more Americans are looking to take control of their privacy online.

A previous survey by DuckDuckGo found that 56.9 per cent of American adults were unaware that Facebook owns Instagram and 44.6 per cent did not even know that Google owns YouTube.

Facebook in 2014 acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion. Both WhatsApp co-founders - Brian Acton and Jan Koum - have quit Facebook over data privacy and Facebook's plans to monetise WhatsApp.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 19, 2018 11:53 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).