Whatsapp - GrapheneOS Discussion Forum

tango

I know this is a topic that comes up quite often but I would guess I am probably not the only one on here that cannot decide whether to install it or not. In an ideal world all my friends would use Signal, but they dont.

Obviously some of the pros are end to end encryption and social contact with friends but if others could list their views of the pros and cons it would help myself and maybe others decide.

I know they cannot get the sim info in GOS (apart from phone number obviously) and of course there is the metadata issue but apart from that is there anything else that you folk can add to make the decision more clear?

Happy New Year to all of you on here btw and may the success of GOS stay strong

Such2938

tango I went through the same torment recently. Perhaps the question is "what's the most acceptable way to use WhatsApp if you must"?
-In a different profile by itself with cross profile notifications on
-With its own VPN account so your IP can't be tied with your other profiles. Proton VPN offers has a free option without bells and whistles.
-Contacts. You're already on your contacts' "contacts" list that FB is happy to ingest so there's no point in stressing too much about it. It's still valuable to give no access to your own contacts. I have none on the WhatsApp profile. How do I know who's who? Based on their profile pics or last few chats for my usuals. Acquaintances have a first "Hey [insert name]" at the top of the chat history, usually relatively short, if I'm in doubt. If I initiate contact after getting number, I already know who I'm contacting and I start with a greeting + their name. Should I ever have any question, I can just look up the number up on my owner profile. It's been a non issue thus far.

-BONUS: Have a separate phone number for your WhatsApp acct that you can give out. You can use a WhatsApp account number on a phone that has a different SIM. You get the initial confirmation text and then remove the sim. If you'd still want to know if someone ever called you, just keep the sim on a separate secondary phone you can check every once in a while. You keep it in a dumb phone or in airplane mode at home with wifi calls/text activated. Even better if it's an older pixel with graphene so location and sensors are off.

evalda

Despite its shortcomings, WhatsApp is still better than Telegram and friends... If I can't get someone over to Signal, WA is the next best thing... That is only true given non-extreme threat model...

f13a-6c3a

evalda WhatsApp is still better than Telegram

I strongly disagree and the simple fact that WA is owned by FB is all the evidence you need, period.

tango

evalda Yes totally agree there. Going by the app privacy report on ios that would confirm this.

tango

f13a-6c3a That is mainly why it makes it difficult to decide. For close friends and family Signal is fine but the problem I find is for aquaintances. They nearly all use whatsapp and it is still a lot better than sms in my opinion.

f13a-6c3a

tango Completely agree.
I too tried and tried pushing Signal but, eventually, had to give up as it was "too technical" for most. I was more successful with Telegram and got most of people I communicate with at least to using it in addition to WA. For those that stayed on WA exclusive I do not not instant message anymore, only calls - as I think FB is more evil than G

evalda

I mean come on, we all would love to use Signal (or Briar and friends) here... But the reality is... Many of our friends is on WA exclusively.... Which is not the worst of the options...

tango

To change the direction slightly I think it would help if we could put together the negatives. The pros like strong encryption, ease of use/connecting with friends etc are clear.

Lets say for example one installs it on a separate user profile with an always on vpn, what exactly is whatsapp gonna be able to hoover up?

f13a-6c3a

tango I think even the objective negatives could be weighted differently for each use case. Here is what I mean.

Out of the 3 messaging apps (Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram) Telegram is probably the worst when it comes to chat encryption - they use proprietary protocol and default group chats encrypted server-side instead of end-to-end - but even with this objective negative I value it more than WhatsApp because of the amount of metadata WA collect (and they do collect quite a bit), stores, and shares with FB.

Similarly, objective negative of WA collecting more data than others and sharing it with FB might not be enough to outweigh its use if they need to stay in touch with friends and family using it.

Here is a good article comparing the 3:
WhatsApp vs Telegram vs Signal (2022 Comparison)

mythodical

tango Lets say for example one installs it on a separate user profile with an always on vpn, what exactly is whatsapp gonna be able to hoover up?

The key that encrypts/decrypts your messages
Your current (VPN) IP
Your telephone number and/or email address, depending on WhatsApp's current account requirements
Your contacts, including names, phone numbers, email addresses, locations and any other information you store on them
Your pseudonym, if you use one
Your true identity, because you can't trust that every acquaintance everywhere will never use your real name or other contact details within their own contact lists

tango

f13a-6c3a Yes totally agree. That was a good read and I guess just reaffirms the fact that we should be using Signal.

tango

mythodical Thanks for adding that list. I am aware of most of the negatives including the last one you made which is probably one that some people might forget about. Its easy to forget sometimes that many of our friends/aquaintances either dont know or simply dont care.

Eirikr70

I agree with Such2938 . There is no question about using Whatsapp or not. If you are really allergic to Whatsapp, you just renounce to chat with "acquaintances". The point is trying to have your familiars use another solution with you and minimise your exposition to Whatsapp, giving it access only to the contacts it requires (which is a solution GrapheneOS is working on).
The question about whether x or y is better than Whatsapp is for me and for now a nonsense.
It will be totally different when the EU rules about interconnexion of the big networks will apply.