Also, I never would have gone away from BBM except they shut it down for android. Frowny Face.
Printable View
Also, I never would have gone away from BBM except they shut it down for android. Frowny Face.
Another beyond member just sent me some whatsapp messages regarding a product he has never purchased and has no interest in. No we wait for the zuk to send in the adverts.
There's no point unless you get rid of FB, Messenger, IG and whatsapp together. Those other apps are tracking you way more already. I downloaded signal though in case more people switch over.
Short answer, no, they aren’t lying. But, they have been trying to find ways to weaken it in order to monetize that data though. The WhatsApp founder quit facebook in protest over this and left about a billion dollars on the table, when all he had to do is STFU and wait another year or something. He basically said he wouldn’t do it, $3B that was already vested was enough, they can keep the $1B. So that’s a bit concerning. But as far as weakening it, I don’t think they have done anything yet but I haven’t looked at it in a few years. If they make a strong claim, you can usually take it at face value for the most part. If they flat out lie, the FTC and many lawyers would jump at the chance to sue them.
Funny enough, the founder of WhatsApp worked with the founder of Signal to implement the same protocol. Under the hood, WhatsApp was changed to do the same thing as Signal for the most part. They were both huge privacy nuts and felt very strongly about this. Like, I feel strongly about encryption and privacy, but I’m pretty sure I’d drop everything and take the $1B if offered, haha.
Signal is a non-profit run by a legit security researcher who has deep roots in the hacker scene. Like old school hackers, before ransomware was a thing and it was more about getting free phone calls or exploring, not the new criminal enterprise kind. I don’t agree with his anarchist politics on a lot of things, but I’d trust anything with his name on it, both ethically and technically. They know next to nothing about their users, not even who is in your contact list. They have had warrants that demand people’s Signal contacts and he has nothing to show them. So, I prefer Signal just because I don’t even have to wonder about it.
The author of Signal even wrote a blog post attesting to WhatsApp’s security back in 2017.
https://signal.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoor/
This really isn’t complicated guys.
$20 Billion to buy WhatsApp.
Zuck gots to get paid.
Nobody is saying they aren’t gonna monetize. There are other ways to do that aside from reading messages.
Like?
Well here's the other thing. Google says that they don't read your email. They read your email. But they can truthfully say that they don't read your email. No, there isn't a dude sitting there following your conversations, but a machine analyzes your email and uses the contents to build a profile on you.
Facebook controls the app. The app gets the whole conversation and can do whatever it wants. The app could analyze conversations and build a profile on you, and send that profile back to facebook for example. It's still end to end encrypted, just with someone taking notes about what topics you like to discuss and reporting back. I don't think the app currently does this today or anything, but this would be an easy way to undermine expectations of privacy without lying.
Bottom of this page under the business messaging section:
https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/sec...rivacy-policy/
Pretty sure they charge businesses a fee for these services
$20 billion worth of business message hosting
I don't have twitter, snap, IG at all. And I don't have FB, LI or banking on my phone. I also don't have my password manager on my phone.
I kinda assume that the day I installed Wechat on the phone, it got access to everything. Probably the safest assumption with most software.
Need a separate wechat phone, and don’t give it the wifi password.
I concede they may do the ad targeting based on your messages in the future. My point is that there is no evidence of this now.
All that said, that doesn’t mean they aren’t using other data (like call logs, who you have active messages/group messages with, group message Subjects, and your contact list) to create profiles to target ads. In fact that could explain why people see targeted ads on things people talk about.
For example say you have a group message with 3 people titled “running”. Person A has been searching for new running shoes and he landed on New Balances. Person A says “hey guys I got these wicked new balance shoes”. You could now see ads for New Balance shoes not because it read that particular message, but instead because your friend just bought new shoes and there is a decent chance that their contacts who they interact with in a group titled “running” would also be interested in similar shoes.
Looks like they are delaying the changes due to the backlash:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/15/t...s-delayed.html
Maybe I'm with the ICQ crowd and my age. But why does one need a messaging app over just normal texting?
International texting, read receipts, speed and reliability, ability to communicate on other devices, sharing files and bigger videos/pictures, picture and video quality, confidentiality as sms has no privacy features.
don't forget group chats. SMS is still a shit show depending on what provider you and the people in the group are on.
group chats are brutal on SMS. That's the main thing for me.