- Many of its users are worried about the new WhatsApp policy on sharing data with Facebook.
- Experts told Insider that while the app will not share message content, it will share with whom, where and when you talk to people.
- Everyone recommends that users switch to Signal, a smaller encrypted messaging app, because it is ‘very trusted’.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
After a change in terms of service caused privacy among users, WhatsApp made it clear on Monday that the new policy does not affect the privacy of people’s messages with friends or family.
The messenger app, which sells itself as a privacy-oriented service, will force users next month to allow Facebook and its affiliates to collect their personal data on WhatsApp, including phone numbers and locations.
If users do not accept the new terms and conditions by February 8, they will be kicked off the app.
WhatsApp said in a statement on Monday that it wanted to talk about “rumors circulating” and said the policy update, which takes effect on February 8, “does not affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family.”
This has led to WhatsApp competitors, Signal and Telegram, seeing millions of users streaming to their apps. They reached number one spot in Google and Apple’s app stores on Wednesday, and Signal received Elon Musk’s approval with one tweet: “Use signal.”
So should WhatsApp users really be concerned about these new privacy changes?
Experts told Insider that WhatsApp will not share any content of messages because it has been decrypted. But the app has access to the metadata – in other words, who sends to whom, when and where.
Alan Woodword, a computer scientist at the University of Surrey, told Insider that the mere fact that WhatsApp shares any kind of personal data with Facebook is worrying because ‘Facebook is openly saying that their business model is to share data with users for profit use.’
Woodword, who prefers to use Signal rather than WhatsApp, said he was surprised when he saw the news because Facebook said it would not collect data from WhatsApp when it took over the messaging app in 2014.
Users may only like WhatsApp because of the fanbase
While privacy-minded people are likely to go to apps like Signal, Woodword thinks “there are a large number of WhatsApp users who will probably have to continue using it to stay in touch with them.”
He also suspects that users will stick to WhatsApp because they will “accept the social contract with Facebook that they can use the platform as long as they share data in exchange for it being free.”
Professor Eerke Boiten, director of the Cyber Technology Institute at De Montfort University in Leicester, told Insider that giving users an ultimatum to accept the new terms is “the worst thing WhatsApp has done.”
It probably rubbed a lot of people wrong, he said.
WhatsApp’s promise that the policy only affects messages sent to business accounts is, according to Boiten, ‘potentially a more limited invasion of privacy’. But it depends on whether Facebook ‘controls this access method’.
Boiten said he expects data, especially contacts and communication metadata, to be shared “wherever and wherever [Facebook and WhatsApp] can get away with it. ‘
Signal is ‘very trusted’
Both and Woodword said they recommend users switch to safer, alternative messaging apps. “Signal is very much trusted,” Boiten said, adding that Telegram also “increased the game” in the coding field.
Wolfie Christl, a researcher and private advocate at Cracked Labs, also joins the chorus of WhatsApp critics recommending users switch to Signal. His reasoning is that the app ‘is run by a non-profit organization and that its source code is publicly available for people to investigate’.
The week from January 4, Signal downloaded 7.5 million downloads, an increase of 4,200% over the previous week. Telegram, has 9 million downloads, an increase of 91%.
“The more people join such services, the safer people who need such services become,” Boiten added.