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As long as people continue to patronize companies like Facebook, Google, and other data mining companies that pose as customer service companies, these corporations will correctly conclude that people care much more about convenience than privacy. As such, why on Earth would they change their behavior?
 
Signal and iMessage!
What I'd like to see is for Messages to be opened up to other apps -- as iChat was on the Mac when it came out. So you could plug in, say, Signal or whatever, but also have iMessage and (as a fallback) SMS -- but all in one place.

What's great about Messages, at least in the US, is that you can open one app and all your iMessage and "other" texts will all be in one place.
 
I wonder what lawmakers and regulators will say about this. WhatsApp’s acquisition by Facebook was only accepted when Facebook agreed to never share data between the services.

Wait until they launch Diem (aka the old Libra) and track everything.

Just what authoritarians want - complete tracking of everything everyone does.
 
The biggest problems some people face is getting all your friends to move. Might be worth just sending one more message of changing your ststus on whatsapp saying you've moved to Signal, Telegram, Viber, or back to good old SMS.
 
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While we on this site may be aware of this tracking and its implications, we are a microscopic minority. The majority of people simply don't care and/or ignore the fine print and will continue to feed Facebook their data.

Good on Apple to at least make users aware of what they're getting into.
 
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What you stated is patently false. As a condition of approving the merger, the FTC required that FaceBook obtain consent from users before changing privacy terms, and the app does exactly that.


Check your facts before posting.
There are other regulators worldwide outside the US. Check your own facts before being so parochial.
 
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The biggest problems some people face is getting all your friends to move. Might be worth just sending one more message of changing your ststus on whatsapp saying you've moved to Signal, Telegram, Viber, or back to good old SMS.

If they do not attempt to communicate with you because you "don't have the Whatsapp," then were they truly your friends?

DISCLAIMERS:
1. I don't use "the WhatsApp"
2. I despise Facebook
3. Facebook's tentacles are EVERYWHERE and said tentacles need amputated.
4. Yes, everyone else is evil also with their own tentacles (false equivalency at its finest!)
 
That’s because their carriers have price-gouged them for SMS messages and they’ve had to outsource their message infrastructure to an app that Facebook provides “free” (aka in exchange for an all you can eat buffet of data).

Fortunately, US carriers never quite got around to making SMS super expensive so we don’t have to do that.
Not quite.

It wasn't SMS but MMS. In Europe we had plenty of SMS bundled in with our plans, but if you wanted to send a picture or a video then you paid through the nose!!

That was the reason for WhatsApp's rise to dominance in Europe in 2010 & 2011.
 
I thought the EU only allowed the purchase of WhatsApp back in the day if they kept the two business separate with no data sharing whatsoever???
100%

that’s why in Europe data will not be transferred.
EU users don’t get this message because it’s illegal.
good to live in the EU
 
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That’s because their carriers have price-gouged them for SMS messages and they’ve had to outsource their message infrastructure to an app that Facebook provides “free” (aka in exchange for an all you can eat buffet of data).

Fortunately, US carriers never quite got around to making SMS super expensive so we don’t have to do that.
Is that really the case? I know in many countries cell service is a fraction of what it costs here in the US. In the UK for example there are numerous unlimited data plans in the $30-40 range, but they can be found as low as $22. I always thought Europe cost less due to a greater population density, so lower infrastructure requirements per capita, until I discovered that NZ and Australia were also less than the US.
 
So 10k is unlimited? I am not arguing that the US system costs less, but we have had unlimited talk and text for many years, meaning unlimited, not high limit. 10k sounds a lot, but for heavy texters, people involved in groups and such, that’s fewer than 1 text (in or out) per 2 minutes in a 12 hour day. Factor in spamming, and it adds up fast.
Who the heck pays for incoming messages?? Do you also pay your mailperson a receiving fee for the already paid postage on your mail?
 
All my work-related chat groups are on whatsapp as well. When I headed the maths department last year, I floated the idea of having everyone communicate via telegram. There was a lot of resistance to needing to download another app. In the end, I decided not to push it.

This is one fight I cannot win, and I am not going to stake my career on it.
I'd honestly go to some newspaper/police/court/whatever if I came there as a student and found out that I had to hand my location and communications data over to an American company to participate.
 
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Thats not good, i use Whats app because its not FaceBook (yes i know its owned by face book but its not facebook & not messenger)

I have a facebook account but don't use it mainly because the last few times i've tried i've found it to be unintuitive, Someone posts on my timeline yet for me to post on my timeline i have to go to a different screen to the screen i'm reading posts on my timeline?
 
I’ve always suspected this is the case but I won’t be agreeing to the new conditions.

Whilst using WhatsApp I once had a verbal conversation regarding a very particular strain of marijuana called red diesel. Within the hour I was offered discounted industrial (red) diesel through advertisements on Facebook. The realisation that the microphone that is accessed for voice calls and messages is listening, processing and reacting to your conversations put me off the Facebook group.

I’m aware that most apps are involved in tracking; I try not to install apps I don’t get a level of valuable functionality from, but seeing it laid out was unsettling.
 
What data can you collect when all of your communications are end to end encrypted apart from your list of contacts and how many times you have called them?
So I must be honest, I've not read much about this. Given FB owns the encrypting end, it is unreasonable that they encrypt one payload for the recipient where it is decrypted, and a second payload for FB data mining where it is also decrypted? Could they perform analysis of the message *before* it is encrypted?

End to end encryption simply states that it is encrypted on your device and decrypted on the recipient's device, I don't believe it precludes either scenario above.
 
Reading these news articles always makes me laugh. My company allows the use of WhatsApp for company communications but won't allow our email service in the native iOS Mail app because of "security concerns".
 
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