Here are 5 Reasons to Stop Using WhatsApp

WhatsApp offers end-to-end encryption for its messaging platform by default, but the platform itself is owned by Meta, known for its privacy-related scandals and appears to engage in an outstanding amount of data collection.

WhatsApp is also the most popular messaging app with over 2 billion users worldwide who transmit 100+ million messages daily. Despite its immense popularity, users who value privacy may be better served jumping to a more secure and private messaging platform. Those on the fence or who may need a push may also find this post helpful in their own decision making process.

In any case, the reasons listed in this post are valid privacy-related reasons for leaving WhatsApp for any of its privacy-friendly competitors.

1. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook/Meta

Facebook/Meta (referred to as simply “Meta” for the rest of this post) has a long history of acquiring and assimilating competitors. These acquisitions dwarf competition, promoting the excessive centralization of a number of resources – to include troves of user data.

Over the years, Meta’s notable acquisitions include:

• Instagram (2012)
• Oculus (2014)
• WhatsApp (2014)
• Giphy (2020)

In 2014, Meta (at this point in time, Facebook) acquired WhatsApp for $16 billion. At the time of purchase (and also as of writing), WhatsApp was (is) the most popular mobile messaging platform around the globe.

According to leaked internal Facebook documents, Meta closely eyed WhatsApp primarily because of their user engagement metrics, which were far superior to their own messaging platform, Facebook Messenger. Meta had detailed insights on WhatsApp, a quickly growing competitor in their market at the time and did not use this data to directly improve their own product. (For what it’s worth, WhatsApp as an independent company was committed to end-user security and privacy.)

Instead, Meta “threw money” at the “problem” and sought to acquire and assimilate the competition. Meta’s acquisition of WhatsApp effectively eliminated their closest competitor, consequently reducing user choice and further centralizing the messaging landscape. Arguably, Meta undermined the security and privacy the independent WhatsApp once stood for, as seen in the ever-growing length of WhatsApp’s privacy policy and the numerous privacy scandals surrounding Meta itself.

Over the years, as WhatsApp has been assimilated into Meta, WhatsApp has also turned into another data collecting machine. Sure, user messages are still end-to-end encrypted within (some) reason and WhatsApp features have “expanded.” However, in the acquisition of WhatsApp, Meta obtained another highly valuable source of data all under the guise of “connecting people” while adding incredible reading time to its privacy policy and terms of use agreement.

The bottom line is: All of the Meta companies function primarily on user engagement – the more users engage with their platforms, the more data becomes available for collection. The more user data Meta has, on average the more money they can make off each user – by selling highly accurate profiles of any given user. WhatsApp is but an extension of this…

Let’s also not forget that Meta collects so much…

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Avoidthehack! RSS authored by Avoidthehack! RSS. Read the original post at: https://avoidthehack.com/stop-using-whatsapp