There are plenty of free and paid instant messaging apps you can download and use. It all depends on your personal preferences. As we all know that Whatsapp is the most popular among the bunch, its fast, its multiplatform, its got funny stickers, you can call for free, i mean everybody in Indonesia uses it, you use it, your friends, your co-workers, your overseas contacts, your mom and dad, your kids, your extended family, your doctor, even the people you hate use it. You CAN NOT uninstall Whatsapp.
Recently theres been a lot of talk about Whatsapp’s changing their terms of service that made a lot of people worried about privacy. “We are part of the Facebook Companies. As part of the Facebook Companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information with, the Facebook Companies as described in WhatsApp’s Privacy Policy, including to provide integrations which enable you to connect your WhatsApp experience with other Facebook Company Products; to ensure security, safety, and integrity across the Facebook Company Products; and to improve your ads and products experience across the Facebook Company Products.”
Most people know that Whatsapp belongs to Facebook. And Facebook is kinda dirty word for privacy these days. Well tough shit, don’t use it if you’re scared that facebook is gonna invade your privacy. How are you gonna contact people now? sms?, how is your boss gonna contact you now?. You can tell them to switch to telegram or Signal, some will or already have it installed, but seriously are most of them gonna do that?.
Here’s the thing though, so can Facebook read my Whatsapp messages?. Nope, conversations with your contacts are end-to-end encrypted, meaning not even WhatsApp can access them. However, by using Whatsapp you are sharing your usage data with it and Facebook, also your phone’s unique identifier, and other types of metadata. which may be linked to your identity.
Personaly I prefer Telegram than Whatsapp. I’ve been using Telegram for couple of years, its fast, you can use it on your pc/laptop without that annoying QR thingy that whatsapp has, its got hilarious sticker sets and gifs. Even though its not automatically end-to-end encrypted it has the option of “secret chat” feature. I also prefer iMessage over Whatsapp because of its simplicity and compability with the Apple ecosystem, but not eveybody uses iOS/MacOS. I’ve installed Signal but none of my contacts are using it so i can’t really comment much about it, all I know that everyone is saying Signal is “really secure” if youre really concerned about privacy.
Look theres no app thats 100% secure. All you need is just common sense when youre having conversations online, no matter what app or platform you’re on. It’s like all those people that are getting into trouble on Twitter for tweeting whatever comes to mind without thinking it over before pressing “send”. Well Twitter is like Whatsapp, Telegram, and Signal except the whole world reads your text lol. The same goes for email, unless you and the other person/s uses PGP or SMIME for encryption.
So if you’re really concerned about privacy, or youre a really important person that cant afford to get their data shared to facebook just use Telegram, or Signal. Either way Google will get your data lol, ain’t that right google?
