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WhatsApp: Let us share your data with Facebook or else:
In a surprise move, WhatsApp recently gave many of its users a difficult choice: they could either accept a revised privacy policy that explicit[sic] allowed the service to share information with parent company Facebook by February 8th, or decline and risk not being able to use the service at all.
[...] Upon further inspection, the updated policy makes clear that data collected by WhatsApp — including user phone numbers, "transaction data, service-related information, information on how you interact with others (including businesses) when using our Services , mobile device information, your IP address" and more are subject to be shared with other properties owned and controlled by Facebook.
"As part of the Facebook Companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information (see here) with, the other Facebook Companies," the updated privacy policy reads. "We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings, including the Facebook Company Products."
[...] The shift appears to be a dramatic about-face for WhatsApp, a company that contends "respect for your privacy" is coded into its DNA and made end-to-end encryption standard across all chats as of 2016.
Additionally, Signal sees surge in new signups after boost from Elon Musk and WhatsApp controversy:
Encrypted messaging app Signal says it's seeing a swell of new users signing up for the platform, so much so that the company is seeing delays in phone number verifications of new accounts across multiple cell providers.
As for what or who is responsible for so many new users interested in trying the platform, which is operated by the nonprofit Signal Foundation, there are two likely culprits: Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Signal competitor WhatsApp.
[...] WhatsApp has outlined a new privacy policy going into effect next month that no longer includes language indicating it will allow users to opt out of data sharing with parent company Facebook. Instead, the new policy expressly outlines how WhatsApp will share data (stuff like your phone number, profile name, and address book info) with Facebook.
Two anonymous submitters also pointed us to this story.
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2 Original Submission #3
(Score: 3, Informative) by Grishnakh on Sunday January 10 2021, @03:48AM (5 children)
I don't know all things that people use WhatsApp for, but if it is just sending messages to people, what about plain old SMS?
SMS is obsolete trash.
SMS is unreliable by design: messages may or may not be delivered. Sometimes they just disappear, and someone gets mad at you because you ignored their message or didn't do what it said ("I told you to come at 7, not 6! Didn't you get my message that I was going to be late?" "No, I never got that. Look. See?") Chat apps don't have this problem: messages are verified received, and if there's a network problem it retries until it receives verification. This is like UDP vs TCP: you don't send anything UDP unless you don't mind some packets disappearing.
SMS is tied to your phone number. What happens when you change your phone number? All your friends now can't text you, until you notify them all, separately, of your new number. What an utterly ridiculous and obsolete limitation. In an age when people don't even memorize phone numbers any more, why would you tie someone's identity to a short number that gets changed from time to time?
SMS doesn't work internationally: SMS is free (these days, but not in the past) within the US, but between countries it is not, and can be quite expensive per message.
SMS doesn't work if you change SIM cards: if I travel to another country, and get a SIM card for my phone that gives me data access only, or gives me a local phone number, no one can text me. With a chat app, they don't even have to know I've left the country; everything works seamlessly as long as I have a connection to the internet. Phone plans that allow international roaming tend to be expensive, or T-mobile (which has terrible coverage in the US).
Another option, especially for longer messages and sending non-text material like images, is email
Email is painful to use on a smartphone. No one wants to mess around with that for just exchanging some short messages. People don't even use email that much any more, except for communications with businesses. I don't know the email addresses for most of the people that I talk to on chat apps. Email is dying, largely due to spam, much like voice telephone calls are dying, due to spam. People still put up with it for some things (and GMail's spam protection helps a lot; we don't have this on the voice-call side though), but it's dying out.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 10 2021, @04:54AM (2 children)
Holy crap. First you dump on sms for being some rickety "old man's tool" then you argue about changing your phone number? My god! The reason you have a cell phone is so you can TAKE YOUR PHONE NUMBER WITH YOU. Nobody has to change phone numbers anymore. You can lose your phone, switch to another cell phone provider, and wait for it... KEEP YOUR PHONE NUMBER!!! Or do you even know that there's this thing called a mic and speaker that allows you to (gasp) TALK WITH A PHONE! I know! It's practically magic! You're life is tied to that number and it's not so you can use SMS messaging.
You now what SMS does? It just works. Like on every phone ever made from android to iphone. It's built into the protocol that allows cell phones to communicate with towers. Without it you're phone simply wouldn't work as soon as you move from one tower coverage to the next. Don't blame SMS for greedy fuck phone providers who saw a way to squeeze dollars out of customers for a free ride.
If you want to rail against the machine why don't you yell and Apple and Google for failing to promote a common protocol for seamlessly messaging over wifi. Both of them have that power. Neither of them have done anything about it. Oh sure, iphones seamlessly use wifi for messaging. But only with other iphones. And android, well sometimes I wonder if google even cares anymore.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday January 11 2021, @07:05PM (1 child)
Are you really this stupid? You can't "take your phone number with you" when you go to a different country. I guess you're one of those morons who's never left the US.
As for Apple and Google, the blame there is with Apple for making their messaging app iPhone-only. Forcing people into their walled garden and refusing to interoperate just isn't Google's typical MO. Android phones let you change all kinds of things to 3rd-party apps, even the dialer, and of course the web browser. iPhones don't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 12 2021, @03:54AM
That's only true if you're an American on Verizon or Sprint (which use CDMA). But Americans on T-Mobile or AT&T (which use GSM) can generally roam in other countries with no problem, besides the roaming fees. For extended stays in other countries, I can buy a local SIM card (GSM) and pop it into my T-Mobile phone. But that doesn't work with a Verizon phone.
When my wife visits the states, her Turkcell (GSM) phone & SIM work fine here, and they have generous international roaming plans available.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 10 2021, @11:39AM (1 child)
I worked at a company whose business ran on sending and receiving SMSes. I can tell you for a fact that, even in the mid-2000s, one could get a message-received-by-device "receipt" from SMSes. This could be switched on in the settings of many/all phones.
I also know that retrying sending of SMSes is the responsibility of the service provider passing on the SMS. When SMSes could not be delivered, our service would get "failed to deliver" responses sometimes up to 24 hours later. Don't blame the technology for shitty implementation by shitty US phone companies.
Why don't you ask WhatsApp and Signal, since their platforms are built around the exact same identifier?
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday January 11 2021, @07:08PM
I also know that retrying sending of SMSes is the responsibility of the service provider passing on the SMS. When SMSes could not be delivered, our service would get "failed to deliver" responses sometimes up to 24 hours later. Don't blame the technology for shitty implementation by shitty US phone companies.
It doesn't matter if the formal specification isn't that bad; the only thing end-users see is the implementation by the shitty phone companies, so that's the only thing that effectively exists. Whoever's to blame, SMS sucks, and that's the main reason these message apps were invented.
Why don't you ask WhatsApp and Signal, since their platforms are built around the exact same identifier?
Interesting; I've never actually used either one. I use apps that have actual accounts and logins and are separate from my phone number, and which I can also use from my PC. If that's how these two apps work, then I'll steer clear because that's the same stupidity that plagues SMS: how the hell am I supposed to use it when I'm outside the US and using a different SIM card?