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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: 2) by MostCynical on Sunday January 10 2021, @09:54PM (1 child)
SMS doesn't manage 'groups' very well/at all (depending on phone/carrier)
I am aware of Whatsapp groups with 200 and 700 people active - SMS just can't do that. In some ways they are more like broadcast systems, but also a forum.. but witht he ability to send and track private messages as part of the 'chat'
Whatsapp also has very good text search.
The issues are that any alternative has to:
1. be easy to use for a non-IT, non-tech savvy 50yo house wife AND her no-nothing-but-surgery husband.. while appeasing the tech AND privacy advocates (not necc. the same people)
and
2. be known and used by a sufficient number of people so they can all use it together - as easily as WhatsApp..
this is a very chicken-and-egg problem - one large group spent many emails deciding what app to use in April 2020.. and they were considering Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram.
Whatsapp won for easy of use and because many people already had it installed on their phones..
Moving groups with 700 members off Whatsapp now is going to be... interesting.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1) by hman on Monday January 11 2021, @12:59PM
You need to invince the soccer moms and maintainers of the school class groups and so on. Everybody else will have to install signal. Then the teens will followup because ewww whatsapp=facebook=old people.