How much worse is it privacy wise for me to give them access to my contacts?
No. Meta is a data harvesting company. Any points of data you give them is bad, privacy-wise.
And don’t believe the claptrap that WhatsApp is “safe” from prying eyes or truly E2EE. Meta is not and has never been trustworthy, and they have been caught lying on countless occasions.
Use their products at your own peril.
but everyone I know uses them and no, they’re not switching to signal…
Well, then y’all can enjoy your loss of privacy. I’m not telling you what to do, but that is the consequence of using their products.
I know, but they don’t give a fuck, and I need to keep up with my friends somehow.
Not with that attitude (like, unironically speaking, you have to be more insistent)
The bigger question is why are your so-called friends not respecting your privacy? Anyone who wouldn’t switch to signal for me is not someone I would want to call a friend.
But as the other person said, no it’s not safe to use WhatsApp.
It’s disrespectful of their privacy, not only your own.
Personally I wouldn’t give Facebook and Meta access to the list of people I know with their names, phone numbers, and some addresses.
DOB, relationships, photos. Multiple email addresses, etc.
what if I need to use it?
Then use it? You don’t have to give it your contacts.
Can you have separate WhatsApp contacts to your phone contacts? Maybe copy them manually to WhatsApp if needed?
u can’t do that without giving it permission to all contacts
I use Launch Chat for the occasional use. You can paste the number there and press a button to open whatsapp dms for given number. Been using it for a very long time without contacts access and never faced an issue, installed from fdroid repo.
Ah shame
Maybe just don’t use WhatsApp at all?
Or use it in a privacy handbox like Blackbox or a work profile.
You need to ask your contacts if that’s ok. Not us.
Yeah, here in Germany, we’ve had a verdict that you need to get written permission from all your contacts, if you give WhatsApp access to their data: https://www.rv.hessenrecht.hessen.de/bshe/document/LARE190000029
I would assume, the same is true in the entire EU.
What happens if you don’t get them?
You hope that you don’t get sued… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Obviously, the vast majority of people never get sued over this, but if you don’t like someone, it’s one of those lawsuits you can throw at pretty much anyone and they’ll likely be guilty.
what about signal, is that illegal aswell?
what about signal, is that illegal aswell?
what about signal?
bro pretty much all of them use WhatsApp, let’s be real
are the terms that you accept when using WhatsApp real enough for you?
You provide us, in accordance with applicable laws, the phone numbers in your mobile address book on a regular basis, including those of both the users of our Services and your other contacts. You confirm you are authorized to provide us such numbers to allow us to provide our Services.
what about signal…
well most ppl in the EU use WhatsApp and give wa access to their contacts…
This is literally the main thing Meta is interested in. DO NOT EVER DO THAT, please.
This app can be used as a work around to add contacts in WhatsApp: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/dev.theolm.wwc/
Or this one: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.vinaygopinath.launchchat/
but it doesn’t show u ppls names, and when you have a lot of ppl on the app, it’s impossible to keep track od them…
also ur carrier knows ur contact list aswell…
It is also inconvenient in many other ways, because Meta makes it intentionally annoying to use WhatsApp without contact permissions 🤷
And no, your carrier does not have access to your phone’s contact list. There is a lot more privacy relevant details in it than pure calling information.
Yes they do, when I message them via sms, which I’ve done w most od my contacts list
No, why would give sending SMS give access to your contact list? The carrier has no system access to the phone contacts app.
Edit: The phone contact app includes a lot more details than just the number. Names, alternative numbers, associated email addresses etc are all in the contacts app and potentially accessible to WhatsApp.
What the carrier has is no different to what WhatsApp gets when you use a number on their service.
Actually, some carrier and SMS apps do need that permission.
An SMS app provided by the carrier? That seems highly unusual.
Yeah, some do that because that way they have even more control over your data and can trap you in their shitty plans.
I’ve been refusing to give them permission for about 5 years now, and the only ill effect I’ve really had is not having a name associated with the contact when texting them
yeah, how do you keep track of their names?
Luckily the folks I tend to chat with the most on whatsapp have a variety of different area codes, so it isn’t too complicated. Groups can still have names, so that also helps
yeah, how do you keep track of their names?
