Any opinions on Whatsapp?

[Weedy]

@purplehorseshoe

Okay, I’ve read the entire thread, and I’m not unaware of issues like identity theft. Can someone explain - as if I’m a very stupid child, or a very ancient little old lady - just why in hell I should share these objections to a messenger app?

Re-reading again, I’m left with mostly this:

… and I need someone to explain - clearly and without hyperbole or “OMG what if” scaremongering - why that’s a problem.

Okay, let’s say I’m roughly an average U.S. citoyen, and so perhaps I have phone contacts for:

… my family (some of whom might be psychopaths, I dunno) and my college buddies (who may or may not actually remember my face or name) and a few work colleagues (who might be up to some shady shit, but I wouldn’t know, we just sit near each other & bitch about the boss or occasionally coordinate happy hour or a game of croquet after work) and my pot hookup (let’s say I’m in a non-legal state) plus a couple gals from the knitting club, a few neighbors I met via NextDoor app, some rando who replied to a Craigslist ad that one time, my boyfriend, my other boyfriend, my ex-girlfriend (hey, ya never know ammirite) and my cousin’s roommate who wants to sell a car I’d be interested in buying.

So now this app has access to all their info as I’ve entered it into my contacts list. Perhaps I used their IRL names; perhaps I only know their party nickname: perhaps everyone is a variation of “Mrs. McBitchyFace123 Bad Dye Job.” (What, that’s not how you store your mother’s contact info?) Maybe my pot hookup is “WeedGuy CheapButCrappy” or maybe he’s “John Smith, Jr.” in my contact list. My neighbor could be stored as “Weird Fucko Shared Driveway” or he may also be “John Smith, Jr.” just because I know two people with the same name.

Now what? So I wanna use WhatsApp and I have to give them permission to access the info I stored on all those exes, neighbors, losers, family members, random semi-strangers, boyfriends, etc. What bad shit comes from that?

Well, it doesn’t matter what name you give them. It knows who they are because they have the phone number. It knows about them, whatever it knows about them from their own app use, or what their friends have reported about them.

There is probably nothing that happens to you directly. It’s just information about you that helps Facebook, or whoever, build up a picture. When they want something from you, your money, your vote, your password, your CPU cycles, whatever, they have information to work with. Some people don’t like the thought of companies keeping really detailed profiles about every aspect of their lives. A lot of people don’t care.

[Uzi]

@RitterSport

My issue with WhatsApp is that they’ve hampered the app to make it almost unusable unless you share your contacts. Skype (Microsoft) doesn’t do that, neither does LinkedIn, GroupMe, etc.

With Skype and Linkedin I have to go searching for a person. With Whatsapp, if I have them in my contacts and they have Whatsapp I can contact them.

I guess you’ll get highly targeted ads, friend suggestions, and so on, unless they mishandle your data. If they do that, maybe spear fishing e-mails which can lead to hacks and possible identity theft, I suppose, if you’re not careful. I’m not scaremongering – these are things that happen when someone’s personal information is in the wrong hands.

No friend requests, no ads, no so ons. Not on the mobile app or in the webapp. Are you thinking of some other app you may have used?

[RitterSport]

@Uzi

With Skype and Linkedin I have to go searching for a person. With Whatsapp, if I have them in my contacts and they have Whatsapp I can contact them.

No friend requests, no ads, no so ons. Not on the mobile app or in the webapp. Are you thinking of some other app you may have used?

No, I would get that from Facebook, not WhatsApp, since Facebook owns them. And, Facebook seems to have been pretty cavalier with the data they have.

[voltaire]

@voltaire

One opinion:
The billionaire co-founder of WhatsApp, which Facebook acquired for $19 billion, just tweeted ‘deletefacebook’

FYI UPDATE:

Another WhatsApp co-founder’s opinion:
“The billionaire chief executive of WhatsApp, Jan Koum, is planning to leave the company after clashing with its parent, Facebook, over the popular messaging service’s strategy and Facebook’s attempts to use its personal data and weaken its encryption, according to people familiar with internal discussions. Koum, who sold WhatsApp to Facebook for more than $19 billion in 2014, also plans to step down from Facebook’s board of directors”

[ISiddiqui]

Why exactly did he think Facebook wanted to buy his company for over $19 billion?

[amarinth]

@RitterSport

I loathe it because you can’t directly contact someone without giving WhatsApp access to all of your contacts. I literally cannot start a message to someone’s phone number unless I give WhatsApp (and, of course Facebook) all of my contact information. So, if someone wants me to talk to them on WhatsApp, I have to have them get in touch with me first, and then I can respond.

This is my biggest issue with WhatsApp - why do they need all my contacts? Why can’t they just get the contacts that I want to use WhatsApp with? It basically is me handing over information about people that haven’t signed up for their service, which I don’t like at all. It can also connect home & business information for people - and do a better job of sussing out nicknames and relationships. (I don’t let anyone else search my email and suggest contacts. That’s just yucky).

@Alessan

I’ve been using WhatsApp dozens of times a day for something like 7 years. Over that period of time, how have I suffered by allowing them access to my list of contacts?

You probably haven’t.

But if Joe Smith is in your contacts, WhatsApp now has his name - it possibly has both his home and business numbers (the latter of which you are unlikely to get from a phone book), and can figure out where he works. It may have one or more of his email addresses (which you also can’t get from a phone book.) It may also have a picture of Joe (again, not in a phone book). Depending on what other information they’ve scraped from other friends of Joe and friends of friends of Joe, they are able to connect him to people he lives and works with. And now, they’ve got a reasonably decent amount of information on a person who never volunteered that information to WhatsApp. Maybe they never do anything with it, but still that seems rather unfair to Joe who isn’t even using the app.

Amazon knows everything about me, and what it doesn’t, Google does. But at least I was the one who told them in exchange for two day shipping and … however you define what I get from Google. It bothers me that WhatsApp has me giving information about other people.

I needed it last time I traveled (all of the tours, hotels, transportation, etc. used WhatsApp & only WhatsApp). I’m not happy with it, but it’s there.

[voltaire]

@ISiddiqui

Why exactly did he think Facebook wanted to buy his company for over $19 billion?

Can’t provide a link right now, but this guy is leaving about a billion dollars in stock options on the table by not waiting longer before leaving. Says a lot. These guys have been decent enough to publicly wave a warning flag, now it’s up to everybody to decide whether or not to listen/care about it.

[voltaire]

@ISiddiqui

Why exactly did he think Facebook wanted to buy his company for over $19 billion?

Oh, and the actual answer to your question is that Facebook wanted WhatsApp’s huuuuuge amount of international, mostly third-world users. (may The Zuckerborg have mercy on their souls)