this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
58 points (88.2% liked)

Technology

59414 readers
3075 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 14 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If you care about privacy, you shouldn't be using WhatsApp anyway. Not when matrix/signal exist.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The problem is when you're the only one in your social group that does. No one I know wants to move somewhere else.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The more of us that take the hit the fewer people just going along.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

How are you convincing your contacts to move from WhatsApp?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Switched cold on them. Basically I told people okay am shutting down WhatsApp, after that hack that allowed third parties install application on your device through bug in calling protocol, and told them am switching to Signal. If you want to reach me, either SMS or Signal. And that's it. Most people I talk to added Signal to their ever-growing list of chat applications.

But if you use anything they already have, they won't change the way they talk to you. There has to be inconvenience involved.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't have WhatsApp on my phone. If they want to talk to me they have to use something else. Most use Telegram.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In many cases you just wouldn't be contacted lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

A few people I know won't switch, but most actually do use something else. And I can contact anyone via SMS anyway

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Or the option that happens in practice: You are just forgotten and people stop contacting you.

People don't like change, and will resist it. How much depends on the person.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

From the partner conversant. Not "your other partner", Facebook/Meta

Edit: "trusted partner"

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Signal had that feature for like a decade. No one should be using WhatsApp or any Facebook products anyway.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Signal needs a feature where I don't need to share my number and I can create a sub account or secondary account for work. I'd be all in then.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

They are testing this feature right now!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:


Calls on WhatsApp are (optionally) getting even more secure for the app’s most privacy-minded users.

When activated, calls will be relayed through Meta / WhatsApp servers, thus concealing your true IP address.

This direct connection allows for faster data transfers and better call quality, but it also means that participants need to know each other’s IP addresses,” WhatsApp’s Daniel Sommermann, Sebastian Messmer, and Attaullah Baig wrote in the post.

“IP addresses may contain information that some of our most privacy-conscious users are mindful of, such as broad geographical location or internet provider.”

The other measure mentioned in the blog post is an option to silence unknown callers (first announced in June), which WhatsApp says prevents spam disturbances and also shuts down a vector for complex cybersecurity attacks.

“Protecting user privacy and security is absolutely necessary for WhatsApp to accomplish its mission to enable private communication for the world,” the blog post reads.


The original article contains 289 words, the summary contains 150 words. Saved 48%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!