[HN Gopher] How WhatsApp works with other Facebook products
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How WhatsApp works with other Facebook products
Author : woliveirajr
Score : 269 points
Date : 2021-01-06 12:11 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.whatsapp.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.whatsapp.com)
| kace91 wrote:
| I already knew this but it's still fucked.
|
| In my country WhatsApp is used for everything from talking to
| friends through setting up a date with your hairdresser to group
| activities like school parents groups.
|
| There is an expectation that the information you share by someone
| having your number is very limited - the person that has your
| number can text you, yes, but they can't know about you, and you
| can limit the small amount of info you let through like your
| profile picture or your online state using privacy controls.
|
| This expectation is completely removed when adding somebody's
| number to your contact list is enough for Facebook to do its
| magic and reveal the owner in your Facebook friends suggestions.
|
| I've had it happen dozens of times, I start texting a tinder
| match and suddenly her profile is there in my suggestions. It's
| common for it to misfire and I end up being suggested the
| personal account of the owner of a business I bought something
| for. They don't even need to text you, you add the number to your
| phone's contact list and it's there.
|
| Facebook needs to be broken apart, and we need a law that the
| data you share with an app can't be used for others period, even
| more so if they were separate businesses when you started using
| the service, and a change of policies is not enough - you might
| already be locked in.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| My suggestion would be to not connect any Facebook services. I
| have an old school FB.com account, an Instagram and a WhatsApp.
| All three of these accounts are not aware of one another. I'm
| sure FB probably still has ways of figuring this out but it
| gets you pretty far in mitigating the infomation flow between
| various FB products.
| salex89 wrote:
| Same in mine, but instead of WhatsApp it is Rakuten Viber,
| which is massively popular in Eastern Europe. Beats me why, I
| don't like it that much and don't have a slightest idea about
| what are they doing with our data. But it became an issue
| trying to communicate without it. I'm a WhatsApp user from the
| early days, and I'm still dreaming about a day WhatsApp will be
| "independent" again.
| vijaybritto wrote:
| Hi, it wont be independent again.
| walkingolof wrote:
| Signal (signal.org) is a good replacement!
| baxtr wrote:
| I am trying to get rid of WhatsApp. My strategy for this is:
| Use iMessage with friends in the Apple world. Convince the
| Android folks to start using Signal. Has been quite successful
| so far.
| [deleted]
| sneak wrote:
| iMessage's end to end cryptography has been backdoored via
| iCloud Backup, on by default since 2011. It uploads complete
| message history to Apple (even SMS, which they would not
| normally see) with Apple keys. Even if you have it turned
| off, your conversation partners won't.
|
| Have your Apple friends install Signal, too.
| GoldenStake wrote:
| I'm excited for the public launch of e2e encryption in the
| Android default Messages app. This would provide encrypted
| messages to a huge audience, everyone already on Android.
|
| Signal has stated that they will not support RCS (possibly
| that they can't due to technical limitations).
| giovannibonetti wrote:
| Telegram is a great alternative to WhatsApp. It's better in
| almost every aspect, as far as I can tell.
| msh wrote:
| Except message security. Whatsapp is end2end encrypted by
| default. Telegram does not, they only provide transport
| security by default.
| tonyztan wrote:
| Signal is a better choice because it uses end-to-end
| encryption by default.
| lxgr wrote:
| Besides the obvious downside of not being meaningfully
| encrypted (even pointing out transport encryption as just
| "encryption" is borderline deceptive marketing these days,
| IMO), until recently it also had a very dubious business
| model.
|
| It now seems to be pivoting towards ad support, but isn't
| this exactly what people have been trying to get away from
| Facebook for?
| yoavm wrote:
| It's worse in the most important aspect for messaging: it
| is not end-to-end encrypted by default. It wouldn't be
| crazy to assume some could get access to your messages.
|
| [0]
| https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/telegram-
| rus...
| young_unixer wrote:
| Whenever I try to install Signal, it asks me to update Google
| Play Services. Sorry, but using Google Play Services seems
| worse than using Whatsapp.
| scotu wrote:
| doesn't whatsapp use Google play services? that's how you
| normally do push notification on android
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| When I disable all Google services, I still recieve Wire,
| whatsapp, Messenger Lite (for marketplace), and email
| messages. All messages are on-time, with Whatsapp coming
| through faster than on my coworkers iphones.
|
| Ironically, Fluffychat, a Matrix client, is the outlier -
| it relies on Google Services Framework to deliver
| messages
| young_unixer wrote:
| It works fine for me. Maybe notifications don't appear as
| fast as they did when I used Google Play Services (I'm
| not sure about this), but everything else works fine.
| raziel2p wrote:
| This has never happened to me, probably because I don't install
| the Facebook app and don't give Messenger Lite access to my
| contacts. If Facebook and Whatsapp were sharing phone numbers
| or metadata behind the scenes I would expect to see a lot of
| suggestions when I log in to the Facebook website, but I don't.
|
| Still agree with your opinion, though. Also, I find it annoying
| that you can't message someone on WhatsApp without adding them
| to contacts.
| dearjames wrote:
| You can actually send a message without saving a contact.
| Using WhatsApp's click to chat:
| wa.me/263xxxxxxxxx?text=Hello
|
| Note: The phone number with country code and no preceding
| plus.
|
| Opening that link will launch WhatsApp (or WhatsApp web) to
| the user's number and the text "Hello" in the message field.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| Doesnt seems to work for me. Get directed to a page saying
| I don't have WhatsApp installed (I do).
|
| Android v8, Firefox v68.6.
| ffpip wrote:
| That is because you are opening in browser. You have to
| set wa.me links to open in app.
|
| Open firefox settings, toggle 'open links in app'.
|
| (or)
|
| Open a chat with yourself in whatsapp.
| https://wa.me/your-number . You can spam anything here,
| it's personal and only you can see it.
|
| They send wa.me/number-of-person-you-are-contacting in
| that chat. Click on it and it will start a chat with
| person-you-are-contacting.
|
| All numbers MUST be in international format. Country code
| and number.
| londons_explore wrote:
| On Chrome Desktop Linux, it doesn't work despite me being
| logged into whatsapp web. Tries to do some xdg-open thing,
| but clearly that will never work considering whatsapp web
| has no registered protocol handlers...
|
| Looks like it is some half completed demo integration
| rather than production ready...
| dearjames wrote:
| Yeah it used to be quite hopeless unless you opened the
| link in a tab that had already loaded WhatsApp web. Now
| however, if you click the green button that says
| "CONTINUE TO CHAT" on the initial screen, it'll load a
| page with an option to download WhatsApp and another
| that's titled "use WhatsApp Web", just click on that one.
| Unfortunately, it will load a new instance of WhatsApp
| web in the current window even if you already have
| another open in another tab.
| TrianguloY wrote:
| I made a tool exactly to do this:
| https://trianguloy.github.io/OpenInWhatsapp_Web/
| ffpip wrote:
| Send the link to yourself in whatsapp and then click on
| it.
|
| Open a chat with yourself in whatsapp.
| https://wa.me/your-number . You can spam anything here,
| it's personal and only you can see it.
|
| They send wa.me/number-of-person-you-are-contacting in
| that chat. Click on it and it will start a chat with
| person-you-are-contacting.
|
| All numbers MUST be in international format. Country code
| and number.
| toper-centage wrote:
| Facebook doesn't have my phone number but it still happens to
| me regularly, because I need the Facebook messenger app. Its
| really fucked.
| dijksterhuis wrote:
| > Also, I find it annoying that you can't message someone on
| WhatsApp without adding them to contacts.
|
| You can, if you're both part of a group chat together. Tap on
| their number and a pop up comes up allowing you to message
| said person.
|
| Also agree with the opinions expressed even with similar
| experience to yourself (no Facebook or messenger apps
| installed, WhatsApp contacts don't appear as suggestions on
| FB website).
| chippytea wrote:
| There are also third party apps like "Click to Chat" that
| let you start conversations with phone numbers. Once you
| sent 1 message you can just use whatsapp normally.
| csunbird wrote:
| But your contacts do install the apps and Facebook can now
| match you.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| >I don't install the Facebook app and don't give Messenger
| Lite access to my contacts
|
| Literally doesn't matter what you do, it's what other people
| do with your data. I can tell from this guy I interned for 15
| years ago that at one point he uploaded his entire address
| book to Facebook including my name, email and phone number
| because he still shows up in facebook recommendations to me
| today on Facebook and IG.
|
| Never gave them access to my contacts either or even had him
| in my contacts but FB's shadow profile knows he knows who I
| am.
| osobo wrote:
| They don't as much share info as live off the same ecosystem
| in your phone. Regular users, who don't actively block their
| FB apps from accessing their phones in depth, will store
| Whatsapp contacts on their phones, which in turn are read by
| the FB and/or Messenger app. Since neither knows the context,
| it just assumes its a new contact and show you info
| accordingly.
| juliand wrote:
| > Also, I find it annoying that you can't message someone on
| WhatsApp without adding them to contacts.
|
| The trick that i use is to type their number into the domain
| wa.me in the following format https://wa.me/xxxxxxxxxxx
|
| That allows you to open a chat to that specific number
| without adding them to your contact list.
| tmp538394722 wrote:
| That's a neat trick, but "Works for me" is not a solution
| for mass surveillance.
| kace91 wrote:
| I don't use their apps.
|
| They are almost certainly sharing data behind the scenes,
| they openly say this in op's link about how WhatsApp uses
| your data:
|
| > improving their services and your experiences using them,
| such as making suggestions for you (for example, of friends
| or group connections, or of interesting content), (...)
| across the Facebook Company Products;
|
| There is a small chance that they've gotten all my data from
| the people at the other side of the conversation if they have
| the fb app installed I guess, which really isn't much better.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Also, I find it annoying that you can't message someone on
| WhatsApp without adding them to contacts.
|
| Is this a new limitation? On iOS I'm still able to message
| someone new using only their phone number. Though I'm
| blocking contact access so perhaps that's why.
| saargrin wrote:
| here in israel its the same
|
| and we also got very high presence of Truecaller so basically
| if you expose your phone number anybody can find your real name
| and FB profile
| infinityplus1 wrote:
| To hide names from Truecaller, we have to create a truecaller
| account with the phone number and then change the name from
| your profile.
| [deleted]
| unixhero wrote:
| Ah, latin america.
|
| Ah, Brazil.
| iamgopal wrote:
| Given that all features are known, how difficult is to build
| p2p WhatsApp clone ? Including all feature parity ?
| eganist wrote:
| > Given that all features are known, how difficult is to
| build p2p WhatsApp clone ? Including all feature parity ?
|
| Signal. It even has one of WhatsApp's founders behind it now.
| mattl wrote:
| Signal doesn't have feature parity with WhatsApp.
|
| Signal groups are a mess.
| benhurmarcel wrote:
| It already exists, but there's one feature that you can't
| copy from Whatsapp: its 2 billion users.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Also, free WhatsApp data is a perk of telcos in many
| countries (most of the Americas). A service that uses up
| expensive data just cannot compete with one that does not.
| Drew_ wrote:
| Stop giving your Facebook apps access to your contacts. Newly
| added contacts were also showing up as suggestions in Facebook
| and Instagram until I turned this off. iOS and Android give you
| all the control you need to stop this from happening you just
| have to use it.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| It happens without any facebook app installed, just tinder +
| whatsapp and voila, you'll get the suggestion when you log on
| with a browser.
| parliament32 wrote:
| Whatsapp is a facebook app, that's the point.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Well I installed whatsapp early on when it was just and
| only a messaging app. I couldn't possibly have predicted
| that it would be bought by facebook and used to cross-
| reference with some dating app.
| anoncow wrote:
| Stopped contact access, but my business Instagram handle
| keeps recommending me to follow my personal friends.
| astronautjones wrote:
| it still gets your information if you're in someone else's
| contact list and they make the connection
| antaviana wrote:
| This. I recently installed Telegram without giving access
| to my contact list.
|
| Within seconds of installing, I received a telegram from a
| co-worker who jokingly said: "For privacy reasons, when you
| install Telegram, it sends a message to all of your
| contacts."
|
| It simply creates your virtual contact list from the
| contact lists of your contacts.
| [deleted]
| tmp538394722 wrote:
| For most people it's not reasonable to use WhatsApp without
| sharing your contact list.
|
| How do you know who you can message with it if the app can't
| check who has it?
|
| Do you, every time you want to message someone, manually copy
| in their number? For every person you communicate with?
|
| What if they previously didn't have WhatsApp installed, but
| have since installed, so you also need to check again every
| time you want to message someone who formerly didn't have
| WhatsApp.
|
| That's not going to work for people.
| stinos wrote:
| _How do you know who you can message with it if the app
| can't check who has it?_
|
| You ask them via other means? It might be slightly
| inconvenient, yes, but you almost make it sound like even
| SMS is an impossible task; SMS is not even _that_ old and
| none of the millions who used it before there were even
| apps to do so had much of the problems you mention. Also
| because not everyone has a usecase requiring to know who
| has what app.
|
| I run WhatsApp on an Android instance with an account
| solely for that, so no contacts etc, and literally all my
| contacts/groups in WhatsApp are people who at one point
| told 'let's do this via whatsapp'. Then again, I don't need
| to message people I don't know with it so I don't have any
| problems.
|
| _Do you, every time you want to message someone, manually
| copy in their number? For every person you communicate
| with?_
|
| No, just once, or else they send me a message and we're
| talking.
|
| tldr; ok I'm not 'most people' in this regard, but still I
| think you're making things look way harder then they
| actually are
| Frondo wrote:
| SMS is 25+ years old -- I only know I had it on my first
| phone -- and the absolute ubiquity of replacements (of
| which WhatsApp is just one) suggests those problems are
| real ones for a lot of people. If you're not "most
| people" in this conversation, that's a pretty big caveat
| when talking about how the problems are not actually so,
| really.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I've been using WhatsApp without giving it contact access
| for a few years and it's _possible_ but _annoying_. Since
| WhatsApp still shows you recent chats you don 't have to
| type phone numbers each time, you just select from the list
| of recent chats. You also get to see people's WhatsApp
| profile photo so it's generally possible to know who you're
| talking to even though their username is their phone
| number. This works ok for me with around a dozen frequent
| WhatsApp contacts but I could see it breaking down if you
| have more than 20 frequent contacts.
|
| > What if they previously didn't have WhatsApp installed,
| but have since installed, so you also need to check again
| every time you want to message someone who formerly didn't
| have WhatsApp.
|
| Why is this important? I use WhatsApp instead of SMS for
| contacts who don't have (free) SMS or who want the extra
| security. It's pretty intentional. Why would I want to use
| WhatsApp with _everyone_? That concept seems aligned with
| Facebook 's goals, not mine.
| tmp538394722 wrote:
| > Why is this important? I use WhatsApp instead of SMS
| for contacts who don't have (free) SMS or who want the
| extra security.
|
| Because WhatsApp (and other messengers) offer a far
| superior messaging experience to SMS: higher fidelity
| media, on time delivery, delivery status, e2e, and many
| more. Better experience means that people actually use
| it.
|
| As you say, for "extra security". But not everyone
| arrived at the decision of "how much security" they need
| at the same moment in time. People come to and leave the
| WA platform, and it's desirable for me to know where
| people are at _now_ so I can use e2e in new places as
| opposed to only with the subset of my social graph that I
| manually copied and pasted in which had installed WA
| before me.
|
| I don't deny that you like your setup, but it sounds
| pretty painful and pretty unlikely to appeal to a broad
| swathe of people, which is essential when trying to
| combat mass surveillance.
|
| (is mass surveillance why you jump through these hoops?)
| ArchOversight wrote:
| On my prepaid plan in Europe I get a lot more data for
| the money than I get SMS messages. Text messages cost me
| 10 cents per message.
|
| WhatsApp by comparison was practically free. So it is not
| even about superior messaging experience, it also comes
| down to cost.
| FalconSensei wrote:
| > possible but annoying
|
| That's the thing: people (non-tech, non-privacy aware)
| are always trading privacy for convenience.
| cameronbrown wrote:
| What's sorely needed is a way to stop the exfiltration of
| private data when it's not provided for a specific reason.
| I bet very few people who share their contacts with
| WhatsApp know they're getting uploaded to Facebook.
| hadrien01 wrote:
| Contact sharing between Facebook and WhatsApp should be
| opt-in with GDPR, but enforcement has been almost non-
| existent these last few years.
| hda111 wrote:
| WhatsApp is nearly unusable without contact access in iOS.
| That's why I installed it a long time ago.
| triceratops wrote:
| It's annoying, but not "nearly unusable". I've been using
| it that way for a long time. I've gotten pretty good at
| figuring people out from their display pics.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| Alternatively, delete the Facebook app from your mobile
| devices and only use Facebook via web (or only on your
| computers and not mobile).
| comprev wrote:
| Plus removing IG, FB and other social media apps
| dramatically improves battery life on older phones.
| tw25656993 wrote:
| Why are you still using their products? From your comment you
| seem pretty passionate about this issue.
|
| From economics there is the concept of "revealed preference",
| your individual subjective preferences are revealed by the
| choices you make. In this case, we can observe that Facebook's
| subjectively bad qualities are enough to demand politicians Do
| Something, but not enough to suffer the inconveniences of using
| a different chat app, etc.
|
| The sad irony is that these points of concern are also
| potential advantages for competing platforms (e.g., Signal),
| and by regulating them away, Facebook/Whatsapp become further
| entrenched.
| ddulaney wrote:
| > In my country WhatsApp is used for everything from talking
| to friends through setting up a date with your hairdresser to
| group activities like school parents groups.
|
| Presumably because they would like to be able to set up a
| date with their hairdresser and participate in parents
| groups. Maybe they could convince their friends to switch,
| but also maybe not. This is why there is a call for
| government intervention: a single person faces an enormous
| social cost for boycotting FB properties, but the government
| can coordinate either a change on Facebook's end or a
| simultaneous changeover to other services.
| tw25656993 wrote:
| > a single person faces an enormous social cost for
| boycotting FB properties
|
| I'm not clear on how to quantify "enormous". Many people
| don't use facebook and still manage to make appointments
| and lead fulfilling social lives.
|
| That said, it is clear that for many people the "social
| cost" is larger than the "facebook evil cost", even for
| people demanding government intervention. I guess for those
| people, the cost for demanding politicians Do Something is
| even less.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _I 'm not clear on how to quantify "enormous". Many
| people don't use facebook and still manage to make
| appointments and lead fulfilling social lives._
|
| It depends a lot on your country or region. Your life is
| different from other people's lives.
|
| In my country, decoupling from Facebook is pretty easy.
| Google, less so, but doable.
|
| In some countries, decoupling from certain apps or
| ecosystems will leave you pretty much stranded.
| young_unixer wrote:
| > Presumably because they would like to be able to set up a
| date with their hairdresser and participate in parents
| groups.
|
| That's a problem, but it's _their_ problem. Having a
| problem doesn 't justify coercing others (in this case,
| Facebook) to solve it for them.
|
| It's OK if we want to solve those problems for them, but
| it's not OK to force someone else to solve them.
| livre wrote:
| It is sometimes even worse than that, my doctor
| appointments have to go through WhatsApp too. I don't like
| WhatsApp but I have no choice when my health depends on it.
| [deleted]
| blinkingled wrote:
| How does it affect someone if they don't have Facebook account or
| even have the FB app installed? (i.e. someone using just
| WhatsApp.) Does FB still get my data via WhatsApp?
| baggachipz wrote:
| I think it would be extremely foolish to assume they don't.
| blinkingled wrote:
| I suspected that might be/is the case - but I also read their
| privacy policy and they claim to provide end to end
| encryption, not store your messages after your device
| downloads it and I haven't seen any ads. So I was trying to
| figure if they're lying about the encryption or FB doesn't
| get any data apart from my contact list which presumably
| isn't encrypted end to end.
|
| It's a weird situation really.
| bschne wrote:
| I signed up for facebook again a few days ago because I need an
| account to manage some events / pages whose target demo is still
| reachable on the platform.
|
| My account was dead for about two years or so before that. Within
| a minute or two of signing up with my (real) email and phone
| number, basically my whole friend list from back when I had an
| account, people I've texted on whatsapp once years ago, etc. were
| in friend suggestions. Downright creepy.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| In a way, I see utility in companies like Facebook openly
| exploiting whats possible with current technologies, web APIs,
| and mobile platforms so that privacy laws have a target of what
| to address and so that the general public can get a grasp of
| what's going on. It's better than it happening in the dark,
| behind the scences.
|
| Before Facebook, if you tried to explain to a layman that your
| social data can be used to manipulate entire elections, people
| probably would have looked at you with strange and furrowed
| brows. Now, it's a question of the best way to address the
| issue.
| bschne wrote:
| Isn't the existence of large enough centrally controlled
| networks for this exploitation to become possible pretty much
| inseparable from it becoming a public topic that gets
| addressed by governements and discussed by the wider public?
| I don't think facebook served as a catalyst for the public to
| start caring about something that was going on in the same /
| an equally problematic form pre-facebook.
| oblio wrote:
| I didn't even have a Facebook account until about 7 years ago.
|
| I finally made one and I had neatly sorted real life friends as
| part of my friends suggestion.
|
| That's when I realized they already had a shadow profile of me
| from everyone else, all I did was activate it and increase
| their confidence level from 95% or something to 100%...
| bzb6 wrote:
| Because you hadn't deleted your account, you disabled it
| temporarily. It helps to read what one clicks.
| bschne wrote:
| Not sure where you're getting this from my post, but that is
| false. I actually deleted it, did not log in again during the
| "grace period" where they will just reactivate it, and my new
| account I created was initially empty (no profile data,
| friends, message history, you name it).
| bzb6 wrote:
| Sorry, I misread.
|
| What usually happens is that those people have you on their
| contact lists, which they uploaded to Facebook to find more
| friends.
| hadrien01 wrote:
| _> When Facebook notified the acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014, it
| informed the Commission that it would be unable to establish
| reliable automated matching between Facebook users ' accounts and
| WhatsApp users' accounts. It stated this both in the notification
| form and in a reply to a request of information from the
| Commission. However, in August 2016, WhatsApp announced updates
| to its terms of service and privacy policy, including the
| possibility of linking WhatsApp users' phone numbers with
| Facebook users' identities._
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/IP_17_...
| simias wrote:
| I may be misunderstanding this legalese vocabulary but doesn't
| "unable" mean "technically incapable"? As in, there's no
| technical way of matching users?
|
| Because if so, man, whoever wrote this must have laughed a lot
| when they wrote it. You may not be able to match 100% of users
| of course, but with the amount of personal data FB has access
| to it should be able to match a good chunk of the userbase with
| a high degree of confidence if it wanted to.
| gabaix wrote:
| In the 2014 merger procedure [1] Facebook described it as
| 'very hard', and 'against its own interest'.
|
| > "The Notifying Party submitted that integration between
| WhatsApp and Facebook would pose significant technical
| difficulties. Notably, integration of WhatsApp's and
| Facebook's networks would require matching WhatsApp users'
| profiles with their profiles on Facebook (or vice versa).
| This would be complicated without the users' involvement
| since Facebook and WhatsApp use different unique user
| identifiers: Facebook ID and mobile phone number,
| respectively. Consequently, Facebook would be unable to
| automatically and reliably associate a Facebook ID with a
| valid phone number used by a user on WhatsApp. Matching of
| WhatsApp profiles with Facebook profiles would most likely
| have to be done manually by users, which in the Notifying
| Party's view is likely to result in a significant backlash
| from both users of Facebook and WhatsApp who do not want to
| match their accounts. Finally, the Notifying Party stated
| that, beyond the difficulties in matching user IDs,
| significant engineering hurdles would have to be overcome to
| enable cross-platform communications, reflecting the
| fundamentally different architecture of Facebook and WhatsApp
| (including the former being cloud-based, the latter not)."
|
| It seems the EU commission interpreted the statement as 'not
| possible'. Facebook played them.
|
| [1] https://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases/decisions/
| m72...
| ugopapa wrote:
| I don't know exactly what to say when reading this. I'm
| astounded that somebody could consider this a reliable
| explanation. Still, I can assume incompetence from whoever
| did that, but the person who drafted it is clearly in bad
| faith. How can that have no repercussions?
| hadrien01 wrote:
| It did have repercussions, albeit extremely limited to
| the scale of Facebook, they were fined 110 million euros
| callamdelaney wrote:
| Reliable is the key word. That's subjective. Could mean
| anything from 1% to 99.99%. In some cases 99.99% is still
| unreliable ;)
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > doesn't "unable" mean "technically incapable"?
|
| Unable is followed by "to establish reliable automated
| matching".
|
| I think the key words here are "reliable" and "automated".
| There's a _ton_ of wiggle room in those words.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| "Unable" is an interesting word. Does that mean they would
| never allow the possibility by policy, or that they could not
| at that time do it, but they have the option to enable it
| technically in the future?
| usrusr wrote:
| The interesting word I think is "reliable": some extremely
| rare corner case where the match isn't correct would be
| enough to make that claim true, but they make it sound as if
| it was worse than randomly guessing.
| goldcd wrote:
| Indeed. That 0.01% is very handy, when you're being grilled
| by oversight.
| Vinnl wrote:
| I think this is what Facebook got fined for earlier, right?
| (With the caveat that it did not lead to a reversal of the
| regulatory approval of the merger, because it was not
| contingent on this.)
| dmitriid wrote:
| > Learn more about the other Facebook Companies and their privacy
| practices by reviewing their privacy policies.
|
| a.k.a.: "we absolve ourselves of all responsibility because you
| should read the million or so pages of dense legalese yourself"
|
| And this is most likely illegal under GDPR.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| I was hoping this was about how WhatsApp (the app) could now do a
| Facebook messaging, or somesuch.
|
| It seems more about how WhatsApp/Facebook the company use your
| data in the background, rather than "how WhatsApp works ...".
| xfz wrote:
| I've been resisting the Facebook (including WhatsApp) monopoly
| but at personal cost so I'm starting to capitulate. The network
| effect has been discussed at length already, but imagine if the
| phone system was controlled by a single company and you could
| only call customers of the same company!
|
| For those living in the EU and UK (where GDPR still applies), has
| anyone had success with an Article 21 "right to object" request?
| For example, objecting to the sharing of data with Facebook when
| using WhatsApp. It is not an absolute right, it's supposed to be
| depending on individual circumstances so I expect there's lots of
| wiggle room for their DPO/legal team to refuse, or just
| stonewall. I'd love to be wrong, so please share...
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > has anyone had success with an Article 21 "right to object"
| request
|
| Facebook breaches the GDPR when it comes to data subject access
| requests and appears to get away with it:
| https://ruben.verborgh.org/facebook/ so Article 21 is likely to
| have the same outcome. Facebook (and other companies) also
| breach the GDPR with their non-compliant consent prompts (where
| you can't actually decline) when visiting their websites and
| also get away with it.
| secfirstmd wrote:
| _" promoting safety, security and integrity across the Facebook
| Company Products, e.g., security systems and fighting spam,
| threads, abuse, or infringement activities;"_
|
| This particular one is very open ended. Facebook's internal
| security team and it's external contractors have internal tools
| that use Facebooks App on people's phones to locate, block and
| alert if marked individuals are near company premises or high
| ranking executives.
|
| Let's say you protest against Facebook outside their offices,
| they could look you up on Facebook, find your account and if you
| enter a zone near their office it will send them an alert.
| Similarly someone with access to the system can ping your phone
| anywhere in the world to find a location with only the very basic
| controls present to prevent it from happening. No doubt the
| internal teams expand that to include key executives, suppliers
| etc.
|
| In theory they should be logged in to their own account to do
| this and not able to ping people in their immediate circles, in
| reality no doubt they could probably have a false account to
| bypass this. If you think about the power of this. Hundreds of
| people with limited oversight free to ping whomever they want as
| long as they can create a loose reason to do it. Remember when
| the Saudis were paying people with insider access at Twitter, you
| could imagine how much the ability of people to ping a FB user
| anywhere in the world is worth. Two billion users...The NSA can
| only dream of such access. From intelligence targets to lovers to
| competitors, hundreds of people have access to this data because
| of FB policies and tech.
|
| At least with FB you don't have to have the app on the phone.
| WhatsApp is however essentially the new SMS, it's impossible not
| to avoid it...and now slowly slowly FB is retaking control.
|
| No wonder Brian Acton has gone to Signal. The original vision of
| WhatsApp is rapidly being eroded by FB. Yes WhatsApp has e2e but
| slowly FB is being FB and looking for return on its investment.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Honestly, all this is fine. So long as they don't scan the
| content - not because I care about that but because I act as if
| they have E2EE (which AFAIK from people I know at FB, they do) -
| I'm fine. After all, who I talk to isn't a big deal. I just don't
| want to be dragnetted into a drug bust because while I don't buy
| my drugs on WhatsApp I definitely discuss using them.
| 29083011397778 wrote:
| Whatsapp is end-to-end encrypted.
|
| Google Drive backups are not. [1]
|
| Should the wrong person/people slip up, your messages are no
| longer end-to-end encrypted, and are stored on Google's servers
|
| [1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/whatsapp-warns-free-google-
| dri...
| renewiltord wrote:
| Oh that's a good point.
| dannyw wrote:
| Is this post written to invite a breakup?
| gcblkjaidfj wrote:
| much better link https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25662215
| harry8 wrote:
| This is a tricky problem and there are a few solutions, none of
| which are perfect. By far the best one if you can manage it is to
| delete your facebook account and apps and never look back.
| Encourage whatsapp contacts to move to signal is probably just
| annoying for you and them but it seems to be steadily happening,
| so make sure you have a signal account.
| tolbish wrote:
| Looks like group video calling is still a beta feature in
| Signal. Would love to know if others find it to be near
| Whatsapp quality.
| Strs2FillMyDrms wrote:
| In my case the only annoying thing is when male friends ask me in
| person if I have an Instagram account, it may have pooped as a
| recommendation because of this, and I categorically deny it...
| they obviously know that it's just for the thirst, but I deny it
| nonetheless.
|
| I think Instagram has an option to not show your number and not
| to appear in recommendations, but I'm sure it doesn't work.
| doubleorseven wrote:
| I've deleted my WhatsApp account 2 months ago even though I also
| live in a country where WhatsApp is mandatory.
|
| How am I doing so far: * I miss a lot of work stuff even though
| some update me on the important stuff through Signal. * I lost
| contact with friends I can't communicate with anymore. * I feel
| that I have more free time to focus on my family and close
| friends. Probably because my neighbors can't sneak into my head
| with things that don't really effect me. * The frequency I check
| my phone dropped by 80%. * Since I closed my instagram account
| and Facebook acount 8 years ago, I am now "Zuckerberg free".
|
| It's hard but It's Worth it.
| orange_tee wrote:
| I have an empty Facebook profile and use Whatsapp all the time.
| The friend suggestions on Facebook that I get are complete
| strangers. I don't know how this works but none of my Whatsapp
| contacts ever appear as suggestions and none of the suggestions
| are people I ever knew.
|
| I don't know how I managed this.
| DisjointedHunt wrote:
| Why can't comments on Hacker news follow etiquette of staying on
| topic?
|
| People here respond to the top comment directly with a point
| that's not even closely related to the top comment. And then
| everyone else follows.
|
| If you're making a new point that's not gaining from the chained
| comments feature or directly conversing/adding on to the person
| above you, just create a new comment.
| amelius wrote:
| We need telecommunication laws like we had in the old days. No
| messing with our data. And the ability to migrate to a different
| network.
| kerng wrote:
| Didn't Facebook legally state they will NOT do this when
| acquiring WhatsApp- to me it sounds as this can be prohibited and
| daily fines with subsequent breakup should be in order.
|
| Sometimes I wish I had studied law...
| asiando wrote:
| I only remember the founders publicly promising that WhatsApp
| won't be absorbed into Facebook or something like that. I don't
| know if they also put it in the legal documents.
| rcMgD2BwE72F wrote:
| Except for social network effects (larger user base), what are
| WhatsApp's advantages vs Signal?
| pixiemagic wrote:
| Well, that is surely by far the main reason anyone uses any
| messaging app. The majority of people don't care about features
| or even privacy, and use the app that everyone else is on. In
| Europe/the UK at least, that seems to be WhatsApp. Outside of
| techie people, if you ask someone to use something like Signal
| you'll be met with "why? I already have WhatsApp".
|
| "larger user base" is an understatement; the difference is
| several orders of magnitude.
|
| (on a personal level, I don't enjoy using WA, but it's
| necessary here unless you only communicate within a bubble of
| tech workers)
| boltzmann_ wrote:
| > except for social network effects In the social networks app
| world this is all that matters
| outime wrote:
| The thing with WhatsApp is that besides the largest user base
| (most important reason IMHO) it just works very well. I don't
| know about Signal as I've briefly used it but why would anyone
| switch apart from us?
|
| You can't just convince the majority of the users with privacy
| arguments or even hypothetical extra features from Signal. Only
| if WhatsApp would introduce something really annoying (huge
| ads, fees, constant technical issues) people would start to
| move. But even Telegram which is so much better IMHO (albeit
| privacy by default isn't better) will hardly be #1 ever if
| nothing of the above happens.
| jjbinx007 wrote:
| I believe WhatsApp used to charge a small fee a few years
| back.
| goatinaboat wrote:
| They charged $1/year "on paper" but never actually
| collected it. That would have been plenty of revenue for
| any normal people but they got greedy and realised their
| user's private data was worth much much more.
| meibo wrote:
| Mind that this was before the Facebook buy-out/the
| original creators leaving, so I assume strategic
| masterminds at FB reversed that pretty quickly.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| I'm curious to know if when I make some voice/video
| calls, and send and receive some data and push
| notifications, how far that dollar would really go.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| At scale, that dollar will go very far. Unmetered
| bandwidth is cheap if you look beyond the cloud providers
| and the majority of calls can be established directly (in
| fact WhatsApp does use UPnP to map ports presumably for
| direct connections) so you'd only ever use that bandwidth
| for texts/transient media uploads and the small
| percentage of calls that can't be established directly
| and need to be proxied through. WhatsApp doesn't store
| media long-term so storage requirements are also small.
| lou1306 wrote:
| "They" = Zuckerberg & his minions after acquiring
| Whatsapp and falsely promising that no, they wouldn't
| dare mining Whatsapp user data or -god forbid!- integrate
| WA's backend into FB's.
| rakoo wrote:
| You can also add Whatsapp founders, who believed
| Zuckerberg when he said that Whatsapp was still going to
| be independent after being bought.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| They _did_ charge iOS users a one-time fee, iirc.
|
| But yes as an early Android adopter, I was a bit
| surprised I never had to pay the yearly $1.
| nvr219 wrote:
| The biggest reason is larger user base. But here are two things
| I do in WhatsApp that I can't do in Signal:
|
| - Share live location. If I need to meet up with somebody, or
| let someone know how far away I am and when I'm arriving, I use
| share live location. "Share for 1 hour." In Signal you can
| share your location at a moment in time but it doesn't update.
|
| - Broadcast messages ("mass text" basically). In WhatsApp I can
| send a message to a list of people without the people on the
| list seeing each other (to them it looks like I messaged them
| 1:1). In Signal I would have to use a group and all the members
| would see each other.
| cja wrote:
| Almost - they get the little broadcast icon under the message
| octorian wrote:
| > Share live location
|
| This can be an extremely useful feature at times, and is also
| E2E encrypted with a similar model to group chats (but
| modified to allow for lossy delivery).
|
| > Broadcast messages
|
| This is one of those interesting features that many people
| are completely oblivious to, don't use, and don't understand
| why anyone needs. Meanwhile, many other people use it
| constantly and simply can't live without it.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > In WhatsApp I can send a message to a list of people
| without the people on the list seeing each other
|
| What's the use case for this? "Happy New Year!"?
| nvr219 wrote:
| Here are a few:
|
| 1. I'm on a few "mailing lists" that are delivered via
| WhatsApp, like "weekly one-minute sermon" type stuff.
|
| 2. I have a friends that are all into the same kind of
| music but don't know each other. I use broadcast to send
| them links to bandcamp, spotify, etc.
|
| 3. I have a broadcast list for my local friends. If I want
| to get rid of something or looking for something ("hey I'm
| getting rid of this, do you want it" [photo]) I use that
| list.
| lxgr wrote:
| Yes, or sharing a joke, a recipe, a holiday photo etc. with
| friends and family that might not know each other. I don't
| use it often, but it's very convenient.
| LUmBULtERA wrote:
| I was able to get most of my family and friends I regularly
| message onto Signal. It has worked great for us. But then -- my
| circles are small and few, so it wasn't too hard. I saw no
| advantage of WhatsApp after getting them to install Signal.
| arximboldi wrote:
| As someone that does not have a smartphone, WhatsApp and Signal
| are really annoying because they are the two apps that can not
| be used without one (even though they have desktop apps).
| Telegram and FB Messenger and Hangouts at least can, but here
| in Europe WhatsApp is the default for everything and there are
| things for which it is becoming almost completely necessary.
|
| But I simply find the whole chat ecosystem so depressing. A few
| years ago at least I could chat with Google Talk people via
| Jabber. It is really absurd that instant messaging is not
| federated like email. Of course there is one explanation: while
| Email was invented in the 70s at research institutions with
| goals beyond profit, IM already started in the 90s with
| companies trying to capitalize their user-base with vendor
| lock-in... (ICQ, MSN, etc.). Sad, sad, sad.
| parliament32 wrote:
| > It is really absurd that instant messaging is not federated
| like email.
|
| The joke is that it used to be. FB Messanger and Google Chat
| had XMPP hooks so you could talk to whatever other platform,
| Slack used to have an IRC integration, MSN/AIM/ICQ never
| tried too hard to get stop reverse-engineers from putting
| their protocols into all-in-one messengers... Then businesses
| realized the value of locking in users and becoming walled
| gardens.
| ralphm wrote:
| As far as I know, Facebook Messenger's XMPP support was
| only exposed to clients (c2s), not to other XMPP servers
| (s2s). Microsoft's Lync (now known as Skype for Business)
| supported XMPP federation until 2019. WhatsApp's client
| protocol was originally based on XMPP. I'm reasonably sure
| that both AIM and Yahoo had XMPP server-to-server support
| ready around 2008, but can offer no proof.
| derin wrote:
| Matrix[1] is trying to solve that issue, I'd highly recommend
| looking into it. I actually pipe most of my various "chat"
| networks (including WhatsApp) into it via bridges[2].
|
| As you said, we in Europe are kind of forced to have WA
| installed, but at least you don't have to use it as your
| primary client if you don't want to. You can even deploy it
| to an Android VM and go completely headless, if you feel the
| need.
|
| [1] https://matrix.org/
|
| [2] https://matrix.org/bridges/
| eitland wrote:
| > As you said, we in Europe are kind of forced to have WA
| installed, but at least you don't have to use it as your
| primary client if you don't want to.
|
| Haven't used WhatsApp for months and then only for a few
| days to talk to someone from US.
|
| My friends were heavy WhatsApp users but we changed one
| group after another to Telegram after WhatsApp were
| brought.
|
| Telegram is far from perfect though so I hope to move to
| Matrix within a few months.
| Timpy wrote:
| I'm stepping out of my domain knowledge on this one to start
| a discussion, I hope to have my points corrected where I'm
| wrong. Another note, I'm not advocating for FB's methods I'm
| strictly interested in some cryptography aspects.
|
| As I understand it, in order to have real end-to-end
| encryption (the real stuff, not some marketing term) each
| device has to generate a long set of keys and with each
| message sent, they cycle through to the next key. If WhatsApp
| is doing what it reports it's doing and it actually is end-
| to-end encrypted then the web application needs to use your
| phone because it needs that set of keys. I'm not sure if it
| specifically sends through your phone or if it sends via the
| webapp, but you have to use the keys in the correct order or
| the device you're contacting won't be able to decrypt the
| next message.
| rkangel wrote:
| Yes, WhatsApp is doing encryption that is E2E between two
| devices. That's a good security model.
|
| There's no particular reason that that has to be two
| _phones_ though - could be desktop, wifi tablet etc.. That
| limitation is a result of a 'product' decision where your
| identity on WhatsApp is a mobile phone number. That
| decision was a big part of what allowed WhatsApp to scale
| quickly (people didn't need to create an account, just
| install the app and start messaging people whose numbers
| they had).
| arximboldi wrote:
| They could allow you to login without a smartphone using
| a SMS confirmation code, as many other services do. But I
| guess they consider dumbphone users with computers too
| much of a niche.
| joshspankit wrote:
| Exactly to the point: They can implement E2E encryption
| in-browser, on dedicated desktop apps, with supported
| routers, and basically anywhere. Even $5 microcontrollers
| can generate and use the same encryption protocol.
| evgen wrote:
| But they don't because modern phones have (semi-)secure
| enclaves that can hold encryption keys and protect them
| from most hacking attempts. Desktops and browsers lack
| this, so any conversation you have via these other
| platforms in the computing environments of 99.999% of the
| population (please spare me the 'I use qubes, so ha!'
| speech) has a much lower level of security/privacy. Since
| most people want conversation sync among the desktop and
| mobile versions this means your security drops to become
| the lowest common denominator among all platforms.
|
| It _can_ be done, but it shouldn 't be done if you
| actually care about security or privacy.
| joshspankit wrote:
| There are valid arguments on all sides of this:
|
| - That desktop browsers can be less secure
|
| - That software can work around that
|
| - That mobile can be more secure
|
| - That mobile can also be false security as "0 days" are
| currently in the wild and mobile phones are typically
| always online
|
| - Etc.
|
| If you truly want security, there's a really compelling
| argument for live-booting a distro like
| https://tails.boum.org/ and then rebooting when you're
| done. On the other side there are compelling phones such
| as the Libre 5 (assuming there are no current 0 days).
| evgen wrote:
| Tails and purism phones are the same 'I run qubes'
| fantasy that I expressly ignored. No one uses these, and
| they are not going to ever use those systems. There are
| fewer 0-days and CVEs in the mobile environment and for
| at least the next five years or so the mobile environment
| will always be more secure than desktops. Right now the
| single biggest step any 'normal' person can take to
| secure their digital life is to throw out their desktop
| and live completely on mobile devices and consoles for
| gaming.
| Closi wrote:
| An additional product decision would be that I will
| assume headaches are caused if a user starts on desktop
| and then decides to move to mobile (Your PC must be on in
| order to use this mobile app!).
| kevincox wrote:
| The real solution here is to generate a second key for
| (or securely transmit the original key to) the mobile
| device. Now the PC needs to be on to set up the second
| device. Once online they are completely independent.
|
| However whatsapp currently assumes that each user has one
| (primary) device and only handles encryption and delivery
| to one device. It isn't impossible to fix (example
| Matrix) but it does require effort and slightly more
| server resources (you need to store messages for longer
| on average)
| Semaphor wrote:
| Everyone who uses WhatsApp has to have a phone. And so they
| can still receive and send SMS. That's what I (in Germany)
| use for people who insist on using mobile-text communication.
| arximboldi wrote:
| Yes, same (also in Germany). I survive, can't complain too
| much, I prefer the advantages of not having a smartphone.
| But for example my neighbours have organized a WhatsApp
| group, which is nice, for stuff that goes on in the
| building and helping eachother out. There are lots of
| examples like that (parents groups at school, etc.) Another
| thing I'm noticing is that SMS is becoming less and less
| reliable, sometimes the messages not reaching the other
| part, particularly when changing country codes...
| fsflover wrote:
| Why would you replace one centralized system for another? Every
| such system gets in trouble once it's too big (in terms of
| money and politically). Choose Matrix instead.
| dearjames wrote:
| Well, in Zimbabwe because of the large user base WhatsApp got
| when it initially arrived (due to reduced charges, SMSs where
| about 15cents a pop then) around 2011-2012, the ISPs have
| effectively made it the only way to communicate economically by
| providing a "bundle".
|
| Basically they offer you a drastically reduced price to only
| access WhatsApp, mostly text message without media at that.
| Compared to the data plan that can access the whole internet it
| is very very cheap to use just WhatsApp.
|
| The cheapest WhatsApp bundle on the most popular network
| (Econet) is currently at around 51cents to text the whole week
| (65MB of data) vs the $13 for 8gigs. Granted the 8gigs is for a
| month but $13 is a big amount in this part of the world, and
| with regular data there's the aspect of discipline to not use
| all that data on youtube and other data hungry apps/websites.
| tilolebo wrote:
| How does this technically work? Does Econet use a dns-based
| filter?
| corobo wrote:
| You can't exclude the one defining reason haha. That's all
| there is, other people use it.
| nelsonenzo wrote:
| Signal unfortunately has limited media support. Otherwise I
| would love to have my wife on it.
| drcongo wrote:
| I've found Signal's media support to be decent (although it
| absolutely mangles video). What are you missing?
| nelsonenzo wrote:
| multi-photo attachments and video.
| [deleted]
| rattray wrote:
| In the past I found signal to be less slick and reliable than
| whatsapp, but hopefully that's no longer true
| simias wrote:
| Signal UI is mediocre. I want it to succeed, but both WhatsApp
| and Telegram are simply a lot more convenient to use.
|
| WA and Telegram have a pure web client when you want to quickly
| have access to your chats without installing anything.
|
| If you decide to install the standalone clients you'll find
| that Telegram is vastly ahead of Signal. You can change the
| spellchecking language and add dictionaries, you have a lot
| more options for formatting messages (code blocks etc...), it
| deals better with multimedia content like inline audio, it's a
| lot faster and less resource-hungry.
|
| The only reason I still bother with Signal is because I know
| that, in theory, from a security perspective it's the better of
| the three. In practice it's by far the worst though.
| drcongo wrote:
| This post sums up my feelings exactly. Signal is objectively
| ugly and has quite a lot of display bugs that there's really
| no excuse for in a messaging app. Telegram is (subjectively)
| beautiful - they really nailed the UI - and is by far the
| nicest to use of the three. WhatsApp is both hideous and
| horrible to use. I wish I could drag people away from it, but
| even having had my WhatsApp status set to "WhatsApp is
| spyware, message me on Telegram" for the past 3 years, not a
| single person has switched.
| screamingninja wrote:
| > Signal is objectively ugly
|
| That's a weird thing to say. How is anything objectively
| ugly? It is a matter of opinion after all.
| Atariman wrote:
| I would recommend Threema. It's been recently open-sourced and
| has the most secure encryption mechanism.
|
| https://threema.ch/en/open-source
| drcongo wrote:
| I had Threema installed but not set up so your comment
| prompted me to set it up and I don't think they could have
| come up with a more confusing setup if they'd tried.
|
| First screen asked me to wiggle my finger on the screen
| without offering any explanation. Second screen gave me a
| random string and told me that's my ID. Third screen asked me
| to add a password for Threema Safe, whatever that is. I then
| couldn't leave that screen at all because the on-screen
| keyboard covered over the next button, and the one big green
| button that was visible did nothing. Eventually I
| accidentally swiped and got to another screen that asked me
| what Threema Safe I wanted to use, like I have any idea what
| a Threema Safe is. After that it asked me to put in a
| username, even though I already have a Threema ID from
| several screens ago. Then it asked for my phone number. So
| now it has a Threema ID, a phone number and a username and I
| have to guess which of those is useful. Then it asked me to
| sync my contacts, I didn't do that. Finally, I got to a
| screen with a QR code, my nickname, my Threema ID, something
| asking me to Enter Code for Linked Number, and a Key
| Fingerprint. This thing bears only a passing resemblance to a
| messaging app.
|
| Most of that setup I kind of understand, but then I'm the
| sort of person who reads HN. There is not a hope in hell of
| getting even 1% of the people I know to even make it through
| the setup process though.
|
| Once inside, I apparently have one contact called ECHOECHO
| who, when I message them, repeat the message back to me. The
| messaging UI is slightly nicer than Signal and WhatsApp's
| though, but not as nice as Telegram's.
| Atariman wrote:
| You're right, the UI maybe could have been a bit more
| intuitive. However, the setup is far from rocket science
| and could easily be improved by the developers.
|
| And yeah, it may only have 1% of users but thats's only
| because 95% have WA... It's a choice about freedom and you
| have to start somewhere. I converted more than 50% of my
| contacts to Threema - the rest has expensive phones but
| obviously no money to protect their privacy.
| mimimi31 wrote:
| I bought Threema a few years ago, but have since replaced all
| the Google services on my phone with microG, which
| unfortunately means that Threema's licence verification
| doesn't work any more. Having such a hard dependency on
| proprietary Google software is a big minus in my book.
|
| >(Threema) has the most secure encryption mechanism
|
| Can you elaborate on that? How is it better than what Signal
| and Whatsapp use?
| Atariman wrote:
| Here is an interesting overview:
| https://www.securemessagingapps.com/
|
| An awesome feature for me is this (from their FAQ): The
| dots are an indicator for a contact's verification level.
| They don't affect the encryption strength, but are a
| measure for the probability, that the saved public key of a
| contact belongs indeed to that contact.
|
| Level 1 (red): The ID and public key have been obtained
| from the server because you received a message from this
| contact for the first time or added the ID manually. No
| matching contact was found in your address book (by phone
| number or email), and therefore you cannot be sure that the
| person is who they claim to be in their messages.
|
| Level 2 (orange): The ID has been matched with a contact in
| your address book (by phone number or email). Since the
| server verifies phone numbers and email addresses, you can
| be reasonably sure that the person is who they claim to be.
|
| Level 2 (blue): This verification level is only available
| in Threema Work; it indicates that the Threema ID belongs
| to an internal company contact.
|
| Level 3 (green): You have personally verified the ID and
| public key of the person by scanning their QR code.
| Assuming their device has not been hijacked, you can be
| very sure that messages from this contact were really
| written by the person that they indicate.
|
| Level 3 (blue): This verification level is only available
| in Threema Work; it indicates that the Threema ID belongs
| to an internal contact whose ID and public key you have
| verified by scanning their QR code.
| TimWolla wrote:
| You can buy Threema within their store if you can't or
| don't want to use Google Play Services:
| https://shop.threema.ch/
| uppsalax wrote:
| There was the same debate over Whatsapp vs Telegram clash.
|
| The fact here is that network effects play a big role in these
| kind of business models.
|
| Moreover think about the fact that whatsapp was one of the
| first entrants, and was bought by Mark Zuckerberg. Brand is
| another big player when we consider and analyse that
| competitive landscape...
|
| Security is one of the most important factors nowadays,
| especially if we consider the data breaches number, that is
| increasing dramatically (600% since covid-19 outbreak). But are
| like p2p models, if there aren't many people to create traffic,
| it isn't worth it (for the moment at least). And in case of
| messaging apps these people must be your friends! (Word-of-
| mouth)
|
| Do not misunderstand me, I am 100% for security and privacy,
| but here users are driven by other factors unfortunately.
| Closi wrote:
| In the UK I don't know a person without WhatsApp, pretty much
| everyone uses it. I don't know a single person who has signal.
|
| If I say to a friend "I'll message you on WhatsApp" they will
| be like "ok great".
|
| If I say to a friend "I'll message you on Signal" they will be
| like "What is that? Oh I have to download something? Don't you
| have WhatsApp? Screw it just send me a text."
|
| So you can't really say "Apart from larger user base why do
| people use it?". It's like saying "Apart from an inability to
| breathe, why don't people live underwater?"
| type0 wrote:
| > It's like saying "Apart from an inability to breathe, why
| don't people live underwater?"
|
| Because https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underwater_habitat
| tommyage wrote:
| I just informed all my important contacts about the deletion
| of my whats app account per this message and told them my
| substitution.
|
| All people who are important to me migrated. Some refused for
| a long time for no reason, but in the end installed a
| separate app alongside WA.
|
| But I get your position: Judging by the amount of unfair
| usability and amount of third parties involved in any co.uk-
| domain, it appears to me that the common folk gives a shit
| about it over there. However, I wont get any site a visit who
| does the above. There are alternatives to gain information.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| In most markets, almost everyone has a WhatsApp account. I
| don't have a Signal account and nobody ever asked for it.
| neals wrote:
| What annoys me to no end is that I was Whatsapping with a local
| restaurant for food delivery during the lockdown and two days
| later, the owner pops up in my Facebook "suggested friends" list.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Could be that the person you contacted has their information
| totally open to FB
| 2sk21 wrote:
| This sounds right. WhatsApp and Facebook both have access to
| contacts so information flows between them through this
| channel
| jtsiskin wrote:
| I think the most likely explanation for this is
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
| neals wrote:
| Or is it your confirmation bias where you expect people to
| distrust Facebook for the wrong reasons so that you can post
| that link?
|
| Because funnily enough, I didn't place blame in my comment. I
| just pointed out my 'annoyance'. You, on the other hand,
| concluded something from that. Ironically.
| timvisee wrote:
| Also: https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/security-and-privacy/how-
| we...
| jraby3 wrote:
| This page is not available in my country.
| murki wrote:
| Not available for me in Mexico either.
| perlgeek wrote:
| Pasting the contents here:
|
| How we work with the Facebook Companies
|
| In this article, we are providing additional information to
| our users in the European Region. What are the Facebook
| Companies?
|
| WhatsApp is one of the Facebook Companies. The Facebook
| Companies include, among others, Facebook, Facebook
| Technologies, and WhatsApp, and together offer the Facebook
| Company Products. Why does WhatsApp share information with
| the Facebook Companies?
|
| WhatsApp works and shares information with the other Facebook
| Companies to receive services like infrastructure,
| technology, and systems that help us provide and improve
| WhatsApp and to keep WhatsApp and the other Facebook
| Companies safe and secure. When we receive services from the
| Facebook Companies, the information we share with them is
| used to help WhatsApp in accordance with our instructions.
| Working together allows us for example to:
| Provide you fast and reliable messaging and calls around the
| world and understand how our Services and features are
| performing. Ensure safety, security, and
| integrity across WhatsApp and the Facebook Company Products
| by removing spam accounts and combating abusive activity.
| Connect your WhatsApp experience with Facebook Company
| Products.
|
| Today, Facebook does not use your WhatsApp account
| information to improve your Facebook product experiences or
| provide you more relevant Facebook ad experiences on
| Facebook. We're always working on new ways to improve how you
| experience WhatsApp and the other Facebook Company Products
| you use. We'll keep you updated on new experiences we offer
| and our data practices. What information does WhatsApp share
| with the Facebook Companies?
|
| In order to receive services from the Facebook Companies,
| WhatsApp shares the information we have about you as
| described in the "Information We Collect" section of the
| Privacy Policy. For example, to provide WhatsApp with
| analytics services, Facebook processes the phone number you
| verified when you signed up for WhatsApp, some of your device
| information (your device identifiers associated with the same
| device or account, operating system version, app version,
| platform information, your mobile country code and network
| code, and flags to enable tracking of the update acceptance
| and control choices), and some of your usage information
| (when you last used WhatsApp and the date you first
| registered your account, and the types and frequency of your
| features usage) on WhatsApp's behalf and in accordance with
| our instructions.
|
| WhatsApp also shares information with other Facebook
| Companies when this is necessary for the purpose of promoting
| safety, security, and integrity across the Facebook
| Companies. This includes the sharing of information that
| enables Facebook and the other Facebook Companies to
| determine whether a certain WhatsApp user is also using other
| Facebook Company Products, and to assess whether the other
| Facebook Companies need to take action, either against such
| user or to protect them. For example, WhatsApp could share
| the information that is necessary to enable Facebook to also
| take action against an identified spammer on Facebook, such
| as information on the incident(s) as well as the phone number
| they verified when they signed up for WhatsApp or device
| identifiers associated with the same device or account. Any
| such transfer is carried out in accordance with the "Our
| Legal Basis For Processing Data" section of the Privacy
| Policy. How is my WhatsApp information used by the Facebook
| Companies? To receive services that will
| help WhatsApp operate, improve, and develop our business.
| When WhatsApp shares information with the Facebook Companies
| in these ways, the Facebook Companies act as service
| providers and the information we share with them is used to
| help WhatsApp in accordance with our instructions.
| We share information with the other Facebook Companies as
| service providers. Service providers help companies like
| WhatsApp by providing infrastructure, technologies, systems,
| tools, information, and expertise to help us provide and
| improve the WhatsApp service for our users.
| This enables us, for example, to understand how our Services
| are being used, and how it compares to usage across the
| Facebook Companies. By sharing information with the other
| Facebook Companies, such as the phone number you verified
| when you signed up for WhatsApp and the last time your
| account was used, we may be able to work out whether or not a
| particular WhatsApp account belongs to someone who also uses
| another service in the Facebook Companies. This allows us to
| more accurately report information about our Services and to
| improve our Services. So, for example, we can then understand
| how people use WhatsApp services compared to their use of
| other apps or services in the other Facebook Companies, which
| in turn helps WhatsApp to explore potential features or
| product improvements. We can also count how many unique users
| WhatsApp has, for example, by establishing which of our users
| do not use any other Facebook apps and how many unique users
| there are across the Facebook Companies. This will help
| WhatsApp more completely report the activity on our service,
| including to investors and regulators. It
| also helps WhatsApp as we explore ways to build a sustainable
| business. For example, as we previously announced, we're
| exploring ways for people and businesses to communicate using
| WhatsApp, and this could include working with the other
| Facebook Companies to help people find businesses they're
| interested in and communicate with via WhatsApp. In this way,
| Facebook could enable users to communicate via WhatsApp with
| businesses they find on Facebook. To keep
| WhatsApp and other Facebook family services safe and secure.
| We share information with the other Facebook Companies in
| accordance with the "Our Legal Basis For Processing Data"
| section of the Privacy Policy, and vice versa, to help fight
| spam and abuse on our Services, help keep them secure, and
| promote safety, security, and integrity on and off our
| Services. So if, for example, any member of the Facebook
| Companies discovers that someone is using its services for
| illegal purposes, it can disable their account and notify the
| other Facebook Companies so that they can also consider doing
| the same. In this way, we only share information for this
| purpose in relation to users that have first been identified
| as having violated our Terms of Service or threatened the
| safety or security of our users or others, about which other
| members of our family of companies should be warned.
| To keep WhatsApp and other Facebook Companies' services safe
| and secure, we need to understand which accounts across the
| Facebook Companies relate to the same user, so we can take
| appropriate action when we identify a user who violates our
| Terms of Services or presents a safety or security threat to
| others. We do not share data for improving
| Facebook products on Facebook and providing more relevant
| Facebook ad experiences. Today, Facebook does not
| use your WhatsApp account information to improve your
| Facebook product experiences or provide you more relevant
| Facebook ad experiences on Facebook. This is a result of
| discussions with the Irish Data Protection Commission and
| other Data Protection Authorities in Europe. We're always
| working on new ways to improve how you experience WhatsApp
| and the other Facebook Company Products you use. Should we
| choose to share such data with the Facebook Companies for
| this purpose in the future, we will only do so when we reach
| an understanding with the Irish Data Protection Commission on
| a future mechanism to enable such use. We'll keep you updated
| on new experiences we offer and our information practices.
|
| Whose WhatsApp information is shared with the Facebook
| Companies for these purposes?
|
| We share information for all WhatsApp users if they choose to
| use our Services. This may include those WhatsApp users who
| are not Facebook users because we need to have the ability to
| share information for all of our users, if necessary, in
| order to be able to receive valuable services from the
| Facebook Companies and fulfill the important purposes
| described in our Privacy Policy and this article.
|
| In all cases, we share the minimum amount of information that
| is needed to fulfill these purposes. We also ensure that the
| information we share is up to date, so if you choose to
| update your WhatsApp phone number, for example, that number
| will also be updated by the members of the Facebook family
| who have received it from us.
|
| Importantly, WhatsApp does not share your WhatsApp contacts
| with Facebook or any other members of the Facebook Companies
| for use for their own purposes, and there are no plans to do
| so. What choices do I have about the Facebook Companies' use
| of my WhatsApp information?
|
| You can always stop using our Services and delete your
| account through the in-app Delete My Account feature.
| Deleting your WhatsApp account will not affect your ability
| to continue using other apps and services offered by the
| other Facebook Companies, just as deleting your Facebook
| account, for example, will not affect your ability to
| continue using WhatsApp. Please see WhatsApp's Privacy Policy
| for further information on what happens when you delete your
| WhatsApp account.
| timvisee wrote:
| Weird! Maybe it's European specific.
| utf_8x wrote:
| Once again - Signal[0] as an alternative. It's fully Open-Source
| (including the backend) and their crypto is public and
| independently verified[1][2][3]...
|
| [0] https://signal.org/en/
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(software)#Encryption_p...
|
| [2] https://threatpost.com/signal-audit-reveals-protocol-
| cryptog...
|
| [3] https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/1013.pdf [PDF]
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