Rant blog...

So much for encryption

There are safe, privacy-minded user-friendly alternatives around such as Signal or Session so why do people persist with WhatsApp? Partly it's because as the article states, WhatsApp users are 'unfazed by the news', tweeting that it was no surprise that a large tech company owned by Facebook would monitor user messages. See? Noone cares. Anyone who is security or privacy-conscious would have got off WhatsApp years ago. One user wrote, 'I thought we all knew what Facebook was doing?'. So that's all right then...

'WhatsApp's promise of private messages with end-to-end encryption appears to have been...' a big fat lie. (alternative link https://archive.is/G9DIt
Mark Zuckerberg laughing 'When Facebook purchased the popular messaging app for $19 billion in 2014, both companies as sured users that their data could not be accessed by either company. 'But Facebook not only hired 1,000 workers to sift through millions of messages on WhatsApp, which has two billion users around the world, but it also shared some of those messages with law enforcement and the U.S. Department of Justice to help put people in prison, ProPublica claims...'

There is an apt saying which goes - 'when people show you what they are - believe them.' That goes the same for businesses. Facebook has never been a reputable company* run by trustworthy people. I don't know anyone who uses Facebook apart from FB Marketplace to sell stuff. I have some scattered family who use WhatsApp for messages. I do what I can to persuade people about alternatives. Friends don't let friends use WhatsApp or Facebook. Personally won't touch anything that has Zuckerberg's sticky paws on it. It's a shame because Instagram was fun, but there are alternatives.
_{*this is an article from ELEVEN YEARS AGO!}