Deleting Whatsapp (finally)
Today marks the day I deleted Whatsapp from my phone. From now on you can’t contact me via Whatsapp.
This was a long-running undertake. Sadly that app is the only messenger to communicate with some of my contacts. It’s not so easy to move them to install another messenger app.1 I told all remaining contacts where they can find me and sent them the URL to my website.
Anyway, at some time you have to pull the plug.
A few reasons for that decision
The reasons are diverse, but these are enough for me:
Whatsapp is owned by Facebook. Even tho they said they won’t merge Facebook and Whatsapp data I wonder why I should believe that corporation? I don’t feel that Facebook really gives a thing about privacy.2
And, IMHO, privacy always was an afterthought on Whatsapp.3
If you think security-wise it looks better, I recommend scrolling through this dedicated page (!) on Wikipedia which lists security and privacy related incidents since the year 2011.
However, it misses the latest hack, but read about that yourself on this Guardian article. This is not science-fiction.
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They use Whatsapp only. I think Signal and Riot are good alternatives. ↩
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Watch the movie The Great Hack if you haven’t yet. ↩
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The WhatsApp privacy problem.
, 2020-04-20 ↩