It’s Time to Ditch WhatsApp
Originally published at tapaseaswar.com on January 11, 2021.
Last week, WhatsApp users received an in-app alert that on its surface seemed like a fairly innocuous update to the platform’s privacy policy that now requires you to share data with Facebook. Changes to privacy policies happen all the time, and this isn’t anything particularly new for WhatsApp. In fact, WhatsApp laid the essential groundwork for data sharing back in 2016, but up until now, should users wish (and remember to) they could opt-out.
However, as of February 8, 2021, this option to opt-out is disappearing, meaning if you don’t agree to share data (including profile name and photo, IP address, phone contacts list, app logs including diagnostic data, and status messages) with Facebook and tis associated companies, you will no longer be able to use the app anymore.
Via: Harish Jonnalagadda at Android Central
So why the sudden shift in policy? Well, WhatsApp claims that this move is designed to improve and customize its services and offerings, but in reality, its solely aimed at giving Facebook even more access than it already has to your data so it can tailor ads based on your interests.
This is my literal nightmare. After years of trying to convince my friends and family to give other platforms a try, such as Hangouts (press F to pay respects), I finally gave in and switched over to WhatsApp in 2016. And for the most part, using WhatsApp seemed to solve the previously messy communication problem as 95% of everyone I spoke with used the service. WhatsApp also gained momentum in the chat space because its exhaustive feature-set and use of end-to-end encryption, specifically the use of the Signal Protocol (which was seen as a victory for privacy advocates as the Signal Protocol is an open-source encryption scheme whose source code is publicly available and has been reviewed and audited by numerous independent security experts).
So, while it’s sad to see WhatsApp go down this route (the exact route that WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum said the service would never make following news of the Facebook acquisition), it makes perfect sense. In many places around the world, such as India, WhatsApp has become inextricably linked to the very fabric of the Internet itself, so much so that it’s become effectively impossible to remove yourself from its grasp. It’s likely that Facebook knows this, and that this was one of the main motivators for the shift in policy.
One of the many reasons why I decided to permanently delete my Facebook account in 2019 was that I was fed up with how it continued to repeatedly mishandle user data and continuously make bad policy decisions, even going so far as to double down on them when criticized by experts and the public alike.
And now, nearly five years later, I’m finding myself in the exact same position I was in prior to switching to WhatsApp — having to convince my friends and family to move their conversational lives to another platform, ideally Telegram (which has far more features than WhatsApp and is less invasive as well) or Signal (which has been set up as a nonprofit that cannot be bought/sold, and one that cannot collect any user data).
The other, arguably less substantial hurdle than the unwillingness to move platforms, is to convince them that their privacy is worth it. One of the most common arguments I hear is that, “I don’t care what they collect, I have nothing to hide.” The thing is that that argument is so incredibly flawed, in that privacy isn’t about hiding information, but rather, privacy is about protecting information. In other words, everyone wants to keep certain aspects of their life private. Ask anyone for their emails, texts, search history, or their financial and medical information, and you won’t be surprised with how many of them say no.
The other aspect to privacy is that a lack of it can create significant harms that anyone would want to avoid. Think of it this way. A 2015 study conducted by MIT researchers found that they only needed four pieces of vague information, such as the dates and locations of four purchases, to identify 90% of people in a data set that recorded three months of credit-card transactions by 1.1 million people. Now imagine a massive, global company like Facebook being able to gather far more data than four pieces of vague information just by virtue of being installed on your phone.
So as hard as switching from WhatsApp to another service may be, to me, maintaining my privacy and refusing to give any more information that I already have to Facebook is far more important.
And if you’re looking for a detailed breakdown of the top secure messaging app platforms, I highly recommended checking out this link here.
