[collyw]

I understand wanting to get rid of FB, but whats your reason for whatsapp? Whatsapp is end to end encrypted, so they can't get access to your messages, no? Is it just that they are owned by FB, or do you have greater security / privacy concerns that I am missing?

[iso947]

Whatsapp contents are secure, but who you are talking to - what groups, what time, how often, is all valuable information.

If you are in a group with a lot of Facebook users that have elementary school kids but are otherwise unrelated, chances are you have one too. Facebook might even infer who you are, and your kids, even if you don’t have an account

[cassianoleal]

Not to mention that most users continuously sync their contact list, and with that info FB can create a much broader and more precise graph of all the network connections. Cross that with, say, political groups you're part of, and you're not only exposing yourself but everybody else who's close to you, regardless of them using either app.

[bozzcl]

Same boat here. I dumped WhatsApp mostly because it's owned by Facebook, which I consider a bit of a privacy risk by itself. On top of that, the app requests access to lots of permissions I don't understand the need for.

Some examples: find accounts on the device, view WiFi connections, retrieve running apps, use biometric hardware.

[Digit-Al]

I can see how the first two might be required.

"Find accounts on the device" is possibly required to connect to your account in order to get your contact list. "View WiFi connections" is possibly needed for getting internet connection.

I can't really see any possible use for the other two though.

I've only looked extremely shallowly at Android development, but I am aware that quite often you need to ask for some particular permission to get access to something that's not particularly obvious from the permission name.

Not trying to give Facebook a free ride here, I am well aware that there is a very high chance they want some of the permissions for "nefarious" purposes. I think companies should have some transparent way of publishing why they want a particular set of permissions.

I have seen companies showing a message along the lines of "we will be asking for <permission> we need to ask this for <reason>" and I do think more companies should do this.

[collyw]

Wifi makes sense, as you can configure apps to only work over wifi (and from what I remember you can do backups only when wifi is available).

[cageface]

I don't like having Facebook apps on my phone at all and I don't like them having the metadata on who I'm messaging and when.