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I’m going to keep this really short because they broke their promise about sharing our data with Facebook, and I don’t know about you’ll, but I’m not at all comfortable with the way they broke their promise. So the question remains will you uninstall WhatsApp or continue to use it despite your data being openly shared with Facebook.



Source:

https://9to5mac.com/2021/01/06/whatsapp-share-your-data-with-facebook/

Yes. The best time to do it was in 2014 when Facebook bought it. If you haven't already, do it now. I suspect Facebook have probably already built backdoors in to it to bypass the end-to-end encryption, but if they haven't then they will soon.

I will recommend Signal in its place: https://signal.org

It is free, open source, can do everything WhatsApp can do, and has a bunch of extra privacy features.

WhatsApp is overrated. I think those who use it do so just to chitchat and nothing serious or business like. Its lack of edit feature drove me crazy until I found Telegram which I am so much in love with Telegram. I hope Telegram is secured too like your recommended "Signal"?

Now we are living in Social Media era so we have to be very careful about these things I also never like Whatsapp after reading this all feeling happy that I uninstall this sometime back and enjoying all on telegram because its much better and secure then this hopefully now many others also understand this all and leave this without any issue for some other alternative solutions.

you dont need to build in backdoors to gain access to the house. if you own the house

unless you personally are creating a private key and passing that private key to a recipient by hand(away from device) and then encoding a message separately and then just pasting in the encoded message into the app..
then they still have access to the key.

if a hacker turns up after that handshake. then fine they cant see the handshake to get the key and listen in. but if they are involved as you handshake they also see the key exchange and thus they can listen in.

apps that offer encryption dont actually make themselves outsiders. it is not meant to stop them. its meant to stop random people later on trying to tap in mid conversation.

Says it builds against closed source Google libraries.  No thanks.

The reason Whatsapp is breaking their initial stance of not data sharing to Facebook is they know they have built a strong and large community of Whatsapp users and it's going to be difficult for quite a lot of users to stop using/uninstall the App if a major and insensitive change like this is made, I use whatsapp, but only for casual discussions with friends and if this policy is going to affect my data and privacy, I don't think I'll have too much of a problem uninstalling the App.
There is no app or service thats completely safe by 'default', the users still have their own responsibility to play, AFAIK, Telegram is the 'home' of scammers and it's a bad choice for people who lack the know-how on the modus operandi of scammers, but like i said, it's about responsibility and if you know all the safety precautions and protocols, and the app isn't using selling or sharing your data, then you can safely use it.

The only reason I used Whatsapp is to send some questions regarding some important matters to the people who know the answer. besides that, I don't even know what else should I do. so far, it is helping me to solve some problems in my homework which google cannot answer. But for socializing as anybody does, I don't do such things. I can use it right now without any problem or whatsoever, maybe uninstalling it later if I don't find any use for it.

LOL yeah, I was pretty sure that most people knew about Signal and that they should use it more.

In regards to Facebook building backdoors to get through encryption, wouldn’t they be forced to use this sort of thing in the investigations from Mueller into Kushner and such? As it was alleged that Kushner (and other members of the Trump admin) were using WhatsApp to hide their communications and have it be fully encrypted.

Never really noticed personally thats WhatsApp has a great international presence, random thing that I wanted to add for people that aren’t from outside of the US and didn’t know that.

again end-to-end encryption just stops people snooping in at the 'to' part

but if you own the app at each end. you have the same access the users have

Indeed. Facebook already owns WhatsApp, but your data or information is still not safe. There are many rumors that Facebook is selling its user data, so we commonly receive ads that we typically search on online shopping sites and Google. It is why it is too late for us to stop using this kind of apps and social media site because they already have our data and information.

This is the kind of changes you get when a company buys the entire major shares in another company. It's always either break and conquer strategy or the utilization of the bought over company resources to restore the other. It might have been a slow coming conspiracy but not unexpected.

Facebook is by far the least place to have your privacy data in display looking at it's minimal security level and usage by a large population. It's really bad what happens in a company's terms of service which gives users a zero option. It could have been best in times of innovations as these, that the TOS be some worth flexible in a way users can choose in what direction or type of service they which to receive. That's the best way to serve people better.

I don't see anyone who would be really want to uninstall WhatsApp but then, it's also an opportunity for another app like WhatsApp to come up and provide needed services in a way that it respects users privacy data.

Long overdue.

Whatsapp is a lot more dangerous than facebook now.

For the most people, whatsapp is the main communication app unlike facebook. Facebook is history. Nobody I know is still using it. It is a dead app.

I want to delete whatsapp but nobody in my phoebook uses something else even if they do, I'll lose all my chat groups.

Zuckerberg hit the jackpot when he bought whatsapp.

People cannot even stop using it.

Well, most of my friends and family members and college groups are totally based on WhatsApp. I think when Facebook bought it, it kind of gave a signal that soon the privacy thing will be not their top priority since Facebook runs on ads by selling our data and algorithm. Technology is indeed going to put human lives in danger in future as although we know how we don't have much privacy yet we are addicted to social media so much that we can't leave it either. Let's see how it goes, governments should interfere much more to stop these tech companies accessing and selling data just for business.

Now thinking about it, I want to delete this app so much because I hate everything about Zuckerberg but the chat groups I joined to gather information makes that impossible.

I can uninstall it but the news I get from those chat groups is by far more important than my personal data which whatsapp collects.

Tough choice. I wish I never used this app before because now I have no other choice but to continue using it.

The biggest issue is that no one or very few users are using "signal" or any other apps/solution. So if we switch to any other app or quit using WhatsApp, we will be left out of the communications through WhatsApp. Unless everyone decides to leave WhatsApp,  the only option for us is to accept its terms and conditions.

Then tell your friends to use Signal. I was the first person to start using Signal in all my friend groups years ago. It took some longer than others, but now everyone uses it. If you show people how their private conversations are being spied on and sold to any number of ad agencies, political organizations, and third parties, then any sensible person will be quite happy to make the switch. You don't even need them to uninstall WhatsApp if they don't care about their privacy - just use Signal as well so you can uninstall WhatsApp.

I'm lucky that I'm not using it nor installed it.

AFAIK, there's also some data sensitivity that Telegram is doing to its users. They have no ads and if there are no ads and they have no product, the users are.

I also feel very uneasy about this new Whatsapp updates. Why are they sharing all these data with Facebook now. I stopped using Facebook last year and maybe I will stop with WA too. Unfortunately all of my friends are using it, should try to convince them to switch to Telegram maybe. It's hard to find alternatives to WA that are used by so many people around the world.

Uninstalling WhatsApp now really will be something very difficult to do. WhatsApp has become almost a part of our lives as we easily keep in touch with most of our friends and family there. The WhatsApp story feature has also become a marketplace for people who run their businesses online.

 Issues about privacy with Tiktok app on how on agreeing to their terms and conditions to use the app, they could obtain your personal information, you gps location, your contact list etc raised some concerns in the past. This still did not stop people from downloading and using the app. WhatsApp will not be any different.

*uninstall WhatsApp is still heavy for me...
my whole near and far family use Whatsapp to communicate with each other. the majority are over 40 years old, surely they will be very difficult to adapt to other applications. many recommend signal, wait until the signal is adopted en masse. 'lol'

The issue raised when Whatsapp said they will share the metadata with their parent company called Facebook but every app we are using on our smartphone uses our details like location, contacts, media access,etc.

If you are concerned about privacy then you can't use any apps but the reason to avoid using WhatsApp is to get annoying ads on Facebook and ither apps you are using.

I wouldn’t say you cant use any apps, I would say that you shouldn’t be using apps by companies that’s entire profit incentive is to gather comprehensive profiles on people and sell them to advertisers to make as much money as possible.

There are many good apps out there, like Signal, that is fully open source and can be verified to be as privacy friendly as possible. I would totally recommend using that messaging app.

It is so messed up you only have 2 alternatives. Either buy an Iphone, or an Android based phone. (HTC, Sony, Xiaomi, Samsung all of these crap are the same thing)

There are some cellphone experiments based on Linux (Purism etc) but I don't see them becoming mainstream soon.

I guess the best route right now is buying an android phone and flashing it with a custom google-free rom. I don't know if these stuff are still a thing or possible but that's what I am going to do when my current phone craps on me.

Best bet is probably some form of a hardened OS on android — I’ve heard good things about GrapheneOS and LineageOS — both recommended on privacytools.io (https://www.privacytools.io/operating-systems/#mobile_os)

I personally understand people wanting to use IOS for the ‘privacy’ features. Apple has been one of the only companies is to publicly battle Facebook (and other developers) about their data harvesting features. Pretty sure, to this date, Apple hasn’t harvested their customer data and is the only company in the industry (as the only competitor is Googles Android) thats primary business is manufacturing and not data selling.

Tough world we’re in. I’d love to see another mobile OS that people stick to.

As a friend of mine was told one day by a beautiful young woman: Which cave do you come from?

Joking apart, it is sad because as most of the members that have answered, a brutal majority of my contacts don't use other apps to keep in touch, so I don't see how could I uninstall it in the short term...

About the Apple products, I hope it is true and that they don't harvest data from it's users (they are already quite expensive, maybe a part of the extra is to reward them for that).

LoL are you that naive? Of course they do.

Best example is Siri. She only responds when you say "hey siri". How do you think that works? It is because She listens to you all the time!

There are lots of stories around people say they talked about pizza on the phone and suddenly the website he visited showed him pizza ads. (pizza is just an example)

I didn't experience that kind of crap myself because I have been a adblock/ublock user since I don't know when.

In reality, a good number of people have emigrated to another similar shit, but let's say that it is more rebellious and more useful in its use (Telegram that raised its downloads to millions), if you are socially active and you handle extra information related to your income thanks to WhatsApp you are forced to stay there is no alternative.

The point is that companies like Facebook want to make their social networks look essential when in reality, fortunately, there are entrepreneurs who are constantly making options, but it seems that everything becomes a cycle, they all fall into the same thing, the management of personal data is a matter of security and money, I don't know which comes first, but all companies have a tendency to go at some point for your personal data.

But you can always enable or disable Siri. In fact, when you turn on for the first time the device or computer, and after every major update, they ask you again if you want it or not. In addition, in WhatsApp you can enable/disable various functionalities in iOS that I think are not available for Android. Anyway, sorry, we are going a bit off-topic here.

You can indeed. And how do you know if that toggle really works or not? ;) As a normie, you naturally think when you switch siri off, she is not running. But this could be faked with a basic if/else block. What if siri is still running but not responding?

Siri is just an example. They watch and log everything you do on your phone. It doesn't matter if it is google or apple. What other choice you got anyway?

All of those little devices we carry in our pockets, each of them is a deep state device.

The same goes for me. Everybody I know is using WhatsApp, even my uncle who hates the Internet and technology uses it. I would love to uninstall WhatsApp and move to a different messaging service if I could convince everybody to do the same.

That's the thing, convincing everyone that to do the same is very much an impossible task as not everyone is really aware or concerned of the privacy policy on the use of whatsapp and not everyone is ready to cut the ties they share with the many users of the much needed services whatsapp offers as it brings friends and family into a nucleated environment where bonds are been parched and sealed.
Its only becomes an issue to those who uses the internet services quite well and knows the menace that can arise should there be a compromise.

Thank you for the information and it can be a guide to me for being cautious in using the whatsapp but I've often heard that the theft of data even occurred on facebook if from whatsapp it may be new to me since it can be told that I am a whatsapp expert without being sent important documents that are likely to be stolen and merely sociable and for the time being to delete the whatsapp I think it will be difficult Because the whatsapp subscriber beat previous telecommunications before the whatsapp appeared and isa fact that is happening today and cannot be given that the whatsapp is already an appropriate means of communication in my country nearly everyone is using the whatsapp and will find it hard to convince your friends and work associates to move using telegrams or something because it takes time and process

Uninstalling apps is base on the app that is unuseful to us because more new things are coming up, someone who had an ancient application can uninstall it because it's old,i don't see any reason while people delete apps, their is some certain apps which people prefer much than others via social media communication such WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, so I think they can not be uninstall totally except they are new innovation.

Have you ever wondered why such exciting application available for free of cost for life time?

They are selling your personal data somewhere and who knows they are seeing you all the time with front and back camera even when you are sleeping or banging. ???

But remember that not everyone cares about their privacy, so in as much as they can have a good time chatting with friends and family, given out their data is nothing big priority to them as long as they aren't scammers to something similar, but most importantly, WhatsApp will definitely loss customers more than before due to that.

I'm not usually one to be paranoid about privacy or installing apps on my phone, but I think when it comes to WhatsApp and TikTok I will live without their service.  I guess maybe if I used them before concerns were brought up I might not care and continue doing so.  I don't think either of them offers me something I'm missing from life so for me it's less of an uninstall issue as it is an avoidance issue.

WhatsApp isn't really popular in the states, so it makes sense that most people have no issue just not using it at all. It's more of an international app which was bought by Facebook to fill in their international gap.

TikTok though -- popular in the states, but not really needed at all. Seems like a great way for the Chinese to get data on the younger generation that will grow up to be the future Western leaders......

I agree it's time but at the same time what's the point because you already got in you already installed it they already got your data they already made a way to get into you.
This day you just need to talk without and with an application, they will already know what you want and a creepy side they will give to you.

From different applications that may or may not is connected to Facebook that they can hear you especially when your internet is on. So when all in good ways the modern ways is safer but we can't blame when we need evolution when we need growth.

Today who knows you secretly watching through your cameras that everything is possible so the best thing to do is be safe and likely start reading rules like tik-tok its popular today but it was learned that everything you do is seen you post right the same time your data is shared right back to there headquarters which they can use because you allowed them without reading any policy when you first installed it and that is the same with Facebook the ways I see it.

As much as possible I am trying to be safe. 

It was useful and good like 10 years ago. Now they are not better than some other apps like viber, signal, telegram. I have stopped using it like 3 years ago.

10 yrs ago, so pretty much just before WhatsApp was purchased by Facebook and any/all data privacy was compromised by Facebook.

Pretty sure they’ve only recently — within the last two years — begun data mining through WhatsApp. But still, why would you use any app made by a data company when you can use something like Signal? (not telegram though, that app is pretty damn shady)

I like telegram. It would be a great substitute for whatsapp in my opinion. Unfortunately only 30% of my friends are using it. I installed telegram also for my dad but he just keeps getting back to whatsapp. It is hard to convince everybody to switch.

Trump was very eager to ban tiktok and wechat, but Biden temporarily allowed them to continue to work on US because Biden is not anti chinese like Trump while they are going to compromise the data privacy of their citizen.

It is not time to uninstall whatsapp. I have my computer shop business and I noticed that a lot of my customers are still communicating through whatsapp. They are using whatsapp for work, calls, chatting and forwarding documents. Though they are considering other platform to communicate, whatsapp is still the other option for them to reach out with their love ones and colleagues.  :)

If most of your family and friends use Whatsapp, i am afraid you will not be able to uninstall whatsapp, as by doing this you will remain cut socially from your near and dear ones.
I am doing small business and we usually communicate on a WhatsApp group. If i quit whatsapp, how can contiune the discussion in that group ?