Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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What harm is there in simply keeping WhatsApp installed on my device and not using it? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I just got my only international contact to switch to Signal, but I don't feel like setting up whatsapp again if I would ever need it for some reason. Is there any harm in simply keeping it and not using it?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 years ago

So if you don't have anyone on WhatsApp then I suggest just uninstalling it. When a new international contact asks you to use it, suggest an alternative because the alternatives are now common and known (like Telegram and Signal). 1) it shows you're principled and they should respect you for that and 2) if they don't want to spend 3 minutes downloading an app for you, they probably aren't worth your time.

However, if you're really attracted to them my opinion above is moot of course.

Technically; you could theoretically disable the app and only enable it when you need to use it. When the app is disabled it's not allowed to run any processes, such as collecting metadata about your phone and sending it to the home server for analysis. But when disabled you wouldn't receive any notifications, and as soon as you reenabled it it would send that metadata. Essentially it would be like treating your WhatsApp account like an email address, and at that point, why not just tell your contacts to contact you by email?