Do you use WhatsApp and do you care about privacy same time?

brandy078

Sorry, if this sound a bit like click bait. 😉
In my country 99% of the communication is on WhatsApp.
So it's hard to avoid it completely.
I'm pretty sure, I'm not the only one in this situation.
Did you guys do something special to use WA as - how to say? - private, secure as possible?
Or do you just the benefits GOS is giving you?

overstep

brandy078

I don't know how much it helps or if this is practical for you but i do the following on gos:

install WhatsApp in a private space with no play services
only other app installed besides the system apps is an always on vpn app
only give it network permission, use contact scopes to limit access to contacts and limit microphone permission. All other permissions are off

Id rather not have it at all. Would be interested to hear if others have other suggestions.

Murcielago

brandy078

Maybe you'll find this post

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/5808-does-grapheneos-prevent-sending-metadata-to-whatsapp/5

and this discussion (edit: just noticed that you also started it, but others might find it useful anyway) helpful:

https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/18962-is-the-usage-of-whatsapp-on-gos-more-secure-in-because-of-privacy

mmobder

brandy078 I have it behid rethinkdns with on-device blocklists, so all those graph., dit. are blocked by hagezi etc.
However, that doesn't guarantee the data is sent via "core" domains.
If you're OK to disable voice calls, you can limit it even further.

jven27

Unfortunately, there isn't anything you can do to stay private while using GoogleFi WA. As soon as I installed GOS I deleted my WA and moved to Signal. I guess the only silver lining is that installing it on GOS means that it's sandboxed.

brandy078

mmobder That sounds interesting for me. Can you please describe it a bit further how to setup?

mmobder

brandy078 https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app/

Eirikr70

I have uninstalled WhatsApp and cancelled my account. That has social impacts but I accept them.

DeletedUser495

mmobder I was going to give the app a try to compare DNS blocking capabilities with Mullvad VPN but what puts me off is the app hasn't had an update in over a year. It is a bit concerning.

brandy078

mmobder Isn't it possible to use rethink DNS and Proton VPN same time?
I tried but it seems not to work, or I'm to dumb for ;)

mmobder

DeletedUser495 they're in pre-releases mode (6 releases in 2025, the last one was yesterday) since major re-work of network engine https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app/releases

DeletedUser495

mmobder I beg your pardon, sometimes I get a bit ahead of myself and don't look at the obvious. Thanks.

mmobder

DeletedUser495 it's a shaky thing, those pre-releases, so you're not mistaken (re stable releases).
The last pre-release that was stable for majority of people, was v055n (Jun'25) afaik.
The latest v055u has https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app/issues/2343 that I don't know if it affects me, so I'm not updating yet.

GrouchyGrape

brandy078 you have to setup Proton from within RethinkDNS which uses up your VPN connection slot, but yes you can use both

Byku

You can disallow WhatsApp access to phone & contacts sacrificing some features in exchange. Whatever you do to hide data from Meta on your end doesn't mean that much when your acquaintances have you in their contacts (probably under full name with phone number, maybe email and other data) and WA has full access to it on their end. Please don't take this as a dicouragement of your efforts, just something to consider.