[tgtweak]

The privacy policy alone on whatsapp is what is keeping everyone I know off of it. It's egregious. FB is 100% snooping on what is being discussed, and if they are now moving to fully client-to-client encrypted on ALL chats (not just the ones you explicitly choose) it's only because they're losing market share to alternatives that are more trustworthy.

[tapoxi]

Whatsapp has been fully e2e for years, maybe since 2016? It uses the Signal protocol.

[NayamAmarshe]

> It uses the Signal protocol.

Is there any evidence for this? Like any independent audits like Signal and Telegram have for their protocols?

[tapoxi]

It was done by Signal themselves: https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/

The client is closed so it can't be independently verified outside of sniffing traffic or decompilation I assume.

[Armic]

As someone unfamiliar with their privacy policy, can you explain what’s egregious about it?

[tgtweak]

Remember when they tried to force everyone to accept the new terms or they would disable access after a certain date? Then they walked it back after people started using alternative platforms.

https://www.livemint.com/technology/apps/whatsapp-to-make-ne...

[bmarquez]

The privacy policy was never "walked back", they decided to do it anyway after the controversy (on HN and other platforms) died down.

Here's a newer article showing the metadata being sent to Facebook (presumably for advertising purposes), it includes your phone number, device ID, and location.

https://www.androidauthority.com/whatsapp-privacy-1189873/

[palata]

> FB is 100% snooping on what is being discussed

Wrong. It has been end-to-end encrypted since 2016. The whole TOS thing was about metadata.

Still I like Signal better, but that's not a reason to be wrong about WhatsApp :-).