Why I am not moving away from WhatsApp to Signal
In the last few days we have seen many people reacting negatively towards the the change in the WhatsApp Privacy Policy. While it was one of the most poorly explained policy updates by a major company, I will be making the case for why the public reaction is overblown over here.
What personal information does Facebook/WhatsApp not have access to
In the image above WhatsApp succinctly explains the personal information that they don’t have access to. This should put most users at ease with the fact that their messages or any private details continue to remain private.
For those of you who don’t trust WhatsApp’s encryption, do remember that they use the same encryption libraries which power Signal built by Open Whisper Systems which has gained a lot of popularity recently due to its strong security and privacy featues. Read more here.
Apart from this WhatsApp explicitly clarifies that they don’t share your contact information with Facebook over here.
What personal information does WhatsApp share with Facebook then?
The following is the information that WhatsApp shares with Facebook:
- Your phone number
- Device identifiers, OS, App version etc
- When you last used WhatsApp and your WhatsApp app usage
- Information from when you message a business on WhatsApp.
- Payments made through WhatsApp Pay.
Sources: Privacy Policy Diff from Stratechery, WhatsApp FAQ 1, WhatsApp FAQ 2
The recent T&C update primarily covers points 4 and 5. This has been confirmed by Ben from Stratechery by doing a privacy policy diff check over here.
Why not move to Signal which has no relationship with Facebook?
Assuming that everyone in my contacts list moves to Signal (which won’t happen), I am still not comfortable using Signal or recommending Signal to my friends and family. Here is why: While Signal does promise better privacy it comes with significant tradeoffs in the form of risk of data loss.
Most people share a lot of critical information such as passwords, bank account information over their messaging software and expect to find them at all times, Signal does not offer a way for users to easily backup and restore data. The following are the obstacles:
- While Signal allows you to enable backup of data, it only stores the backup locally on the phone. Which means if you lose your phone or your phone memory fails for some reason, your data is lost with no means of retrieving it.
- The backup files are encrypted and require a random 30 digit passphrase to unlock. Again, if you forget or lose this passphrase, your data is lost forever.
I know a lot of techies will find these to be trivial obstacles which can be easily solved, the vast majority of people cannot be expected to do so. You will be surprised to know the number of people who don’t enable backup of their WhatsApp messages inspite of it being a one-click option in WhatsApp.
What about Telegram?
If you are someone who cares about privacy and security, Telegram is one of the most insecure ways of communication out there. End to End Encryption is disabled by default and is available only when you opt for secret chats. All communication over groups are unencrypted by default. In fact Telegram plans to show ads in public groups in 2021. So much for running away from Facebook’s advertising based model.
Conclusion
WhatsApp’s privacy and data sharing with Facebook is pretty benign and does not warrant shifting your entire friends and family to another service because they come with some costs/risks.
