Following my post Bye Bye Whatsapp my friend Harsha pointed out that Instagram is also owned by Facebook and has anybody read its privacy policy?
So, I read it and Insta's data sharing is as intrusive and invasive as Whatsapp is going to have. So, for the moment, I have turned off all permissions for the insta app on my phone and the app still works. I never entered my phone number in that and they will still have my usage data but that every website and their brother do via cookies these days.
That's where I am drawing the line for the moment. Telling you in case you didn't know that Insta can use your camera for face recognition and use it for their purposes.
Heinlein once said "Don't appeal to a man's better side, he might not have one, appeal to his self-interest instead."
Everybody has a self interest and big businesses have big interests.
I am answering the question you haven't asked yet.
Whatsapp is going to start sharing their user data with Facebook from 8th Feb 2021.
When someone asks "Why?" about anything, usually the answer is "Money."
Facebook and Whatsapp are owned by the same corporation and Whatsapp has phone numbers and other data from their users that Facebook doesn't have. Some of this data may include the location of the users as Whatsapp is exclusively a mobile app. (Yes, I know they have a web client but it is tethered to the mobile app.)
By getting this data from Whatsapp, Facebook will be able to serve more ads and other marketing to their users.
There are two caveats to this in my case:
1. I am in UK and the new terms will not apply to UK and EU users. Yet.
2. The new terms are optional. For now.
Here are the reasons that I am still moving away from Whatsapp on 1st Feb 2021.
1. Even though it's not applicable in UK, I have family and friends in India, US, Canada and other non-EU parts of the world. Being in IT I do understand how much data an app can collect on me through those indirect channels even if they can't share my data directly. This is called "Big Data" and you would not believe the tools that are available to analyse this data and create amazing trend reports.
2. I already hate FB for how much of a marketing-whore it has become. I plan to move away from it later this year.
3. The terms maybe optional now but they won't be for long.
4. This is just an evil trend and I want to dump this app now.
And, this one is a bonus.
5. So many of my friends and family are moving to Signal that I can easily move.
Credit to my nephew Gaurav for bringing this to my attention. Now he's the trendsetter in our family.
Here is a poll from androidpolice.com on this issue. Apparently out of the 10000 respondents only 30% are still on Whatsapp.
If you are looking to move to Signal, here is the download link - https://signal.org/
It's an open source app, has a proper desktop app that connects with the mobile, same as Whatsapp used to do. Yes, I have read their privacy policy, no evilness so far. It has end-to-end encryption like Whatsapp.
Finally, I can't resist this quote from "Serenity".
