What does WhatsApp do well?
Posted: Sun Dec 22, 2024 5:03 am
WhatsApp (and Snapchat)
Before I talk about Facebook, I want to discuss WhatsApp. In the discussion on social media, I see that people think that WhatsApp shares information with parent company Facebook. They also think that WhatsApp reads your messages.
WhatsApp does more to protect your privacy than you might think. Since April 2016, WhatsApp has been encrypting your messages . To do this, it uses end-to-end encryption. This means that your messages are converted into a kind of code. If a malicious person intercepts your message, he or she will see a web of characters that cannot be made sense of.
But WhatsApp does more. It increases security by applying SSL/TLS and protection against MITM attacks. These abbreviations may not mean much to you, but WhatsApp is therefore a lot safer than, for example, Snapchat . Snapchat barely meets these standards. And that is quite remarkable, especially when you consider how popular Snapchat is with young people.
And then perhaps the best news of all. WhatsApp recently promised that it would not share personal data of EU citizens with Facebook until the company could comply with the new, fairly strict European privacy legislation ( GDPR ). This will be enforced from 25 May, so WhatsApp will undoubtedly make an effort to comply with the rules in Europe.
What could be improved?
So far the good news. But there are also concerns. For example, WhatsApp's encryption technology is not open source. As a result, we cannot check whether the encryption has weaknesses. On this point, we have to take WhatsApp at its word.
What’s more, WhatsApp has only encrypted the content of your messages, not your behavioral data. So the messaging service can’t read along with you, but it does keep track of which phone example of whatsapp number in philippines numbers communicate with each other, where they do it and when. Oh, and WhatsApp downloads your contact list.
In short, WhatsApp does not read your messages, but it does have all sorts of other information. All these bits of information together can still tell a lot about the nature and content of your communication.
Is there an alternative?
You may be wondering if there are any alternatives to WhatsApp. There certainly are. The app Signal is often mentioned . The bad news? Signal feels like a deserted bar on a rainy Monday night. There are simply too few people using it.
Facebook
So much for WhatsApp. Now let's look at Facebook. Last month, the American company announced that it would anticipate the new European privacy rules (GDPR) . They had to.
What does Facebook do well?
CEO Mark Zuckerberg's company is working to make its privacy tools more accessible , under pressure from Europe . All privacy options will be neatly placed on one page. Previously, Facebook had spread this information in a rather opaque way over some 20 pages.
Before I talk about Facebook, I want to discuss WhatsApp. In the discussion on social media, I see that people think that WhatsApp shares information with parent company Facebook. They also think that WhatsApp reads your messages.
WhatsApp does more to protect your privacy than you might think. Since April 2016, WhatsApp has been encrypting your messages . To do this, it uses end-to-end encryption. This means that your messages are converted into a kind of code. If a malicious person intercepts your message, he or she will see a web of characters that cannot be made sense of.
But WhatsApp does more. It increases security by applying SSL/TLS and protection against MITM attacks. These abbreviations may not mean much to you, but WhatsApp is therefore a lot safer than, for example, Snapchat . Snapchat barely meets these standards. And that is quite remarkable, especially when you consider how popular Snapchat is with young people.
And then perhaps the best news of all. WhatsApp recently promised that it would not share personal data of EU citizens with Facebook until the company could comply with the new, fairly strict European privacy legislation ( GDPR ). This will be enforced from 25 May, so WhatsApp will undoubtedly make an effort to comply with the rules in Europe.
What could be improved?
So far the good news. But there are also concerns. For example, WhatsApp's encryption technology is not open source. As a result, we cannot check whether the encryption has weaknesses. On this point, we have to take WhatsApp at its word.
What’s more, WhatsApp has only encrypted the content of your messages, not your behavioral data. So the messaging service can’t read along with you, but it does keep track of which phone example of whatsapp number in philippines numbers communicate with each other, where they do it and when. Oh, and WhatsApp downloads your contact list.
In short, WhatsApp does not read your messages, but it does have all sorts of other information. All these bits of information together can still tell a lot about the nature and content of your communication.
Is there an alternative?
You may be wondering if there are any alternatives to WhatsApp. There certainly are. The app Signal is often mentioned . The bad news? Signal feels like a deserted bar on a rainy Monday night. There are simply too few people using it.
So much for WhatsApp. Now let's look at Facebook. Last month, the American company announced that it would anticipate the new European privacy rules (GDPR) . They had to.
What does Facebook do well?
CEO Mark Zuckerberg's company is working to make its privacy tools more accessible , under pressure from Europe . All privacy options will be neatly placed on one page. Previously, Facebook had spread this information in a rather opaque way over some 20 pages.