- WhatsApp’s new policy on data sharing with Facebook has worried many of its users.
- Experts told Insider that while the app doesn’t share the message’s content, it will share who, where and when you talk to people.
- They all recommended that users switch to Signal, a smaller encrypted messaging application, as it is “highly reliable”.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
After a change in its terms of service raised privacy concerns among users, WhatsApp clarified on Monday that its new policy does not affect the privacy of people’s messages with friends or family.
The messaging app, which sells itself as a privacy-focused service, will force its users next month to agree to allow Facebook and its subsidiaries 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 expelled from the application.
WhatsApp said in a statement on Monday that it wants to address “circulating rumors”, saying that the policy update, which takes effect on February 8, “does not affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family in any way. “.
This subsequently led to WhatsApp rivals Signal and Telegram, who saw millions of users migrating to their apps. They reached number one on Google and Apple’s app stores on Wednesday, and Signal won approval from Elon Musk with a tweet: “Use signal.”
So, should WhatsApp users really worry about these new privacy changes?
Experts told Insider that WhatsApp will not share any message content because it is decrypted. But the application will be able to access the metadata – in other words, who sends messages to whom, when and from where.
Alan Woodword, a computer scientist at the University of Surrey, told Insider that the simple fact that WhatsApp is sharing any type of personal data with Facebook is worrisome, since “Facebook openly says that its business model is to use related data to users to make a profit. “
Woodword, who prefers to use Signal instead of WhatsApp, said he was surprised to see the news because Facebook said it would not collect WhatsApp data when it took over the messaging app in 2014.
Users can stay with WhatsApp because of its fan base
While privacy-conscious people are likely to turn to apps like Signal, Woodword thinks “there is a large enough number of WhatsApp users that it will likely be necessary to continue using it to stay in touch with them.”
He also suspects that users will stay with 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 about accepting the new terms is “the worst thing WhatsApp has ever done”.
It probably upset many people, he said.
WhatsApp’s promise to only allow the policy to affect messages sent to business accounts is “potentially a more limited breach of privacy,” according to Boiten. But it depends on whether Facebook “keeps track of that access method.”
Boiten said he expects data, especially contacts and communication metadata, to be shared “when and where [Facebook and WhatsApp] can get away with it. ”
The signal is ‘highly reliable’
Boiten and Woodword said they would recommend that users switch to more secure and alternative messaging apps. “Signal is highly reliable,” said Boiten, adding that Telegram has also “increased its game” in the field of cryptography.
Wolfie Christl, researcher and privacy advocate at Cracked Labs, also joins the chorus of WhatsApp critics who recommend that users switch to Signal. His reasoning is that the application is “run by a non-profit organization and its source code is publicly available for people to review”.
In the week that started on January 4, Signal had 7.5 million downloads, an increase of 4,200% over the previous week. Telegram had 9 million downloads, an increase of 91%.
“The more people who subscribe to these services, the more secure the people who really need these services become,” added Boiten.