The WhatsApp Problem

TidBITS Talk
1

I have never inserted myself in either the Alphabet or the Meta universe on purpose. Though I have had Gmail accounts, I do not use Google for Search and have never opened a Facebook account. From what I understand, I am probably there as a virtual bookmark, and they know of my existence, regardless, I do not wish to give them my data, nor do I trust them with it.

My spouse and I are considering going on a trip to Eastern Europe with a group from the local university. These are mostly older people (part of the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute). These people seem to live on Facebook, which I would expect of their generation. They also said that they primarily use WhatsApp to communicate when they are on their trips abroad to other members of the group. This came from the trip organizer. Neither my spouse or I have Facebook accounts, and I am adverse to open one just to get on WA.

Are their other options? Does opening a WA account mean I will have a FB/Threads/Instagram account? Can I delete it after opening it, or is it like Pandora’s Box that once it is open, you exist in their world?

I am asking because I really have no knowledge of this sector of the Internet.

(I am happy to not have relatives, old school chums, etc be able to reach me with little effort. With a little more effort I can be contacted, but it seems that creating an account like this will make me suddenly visible to this world.)

4 Likes
2

I was on a small group trip a few months ago. I think it is common practice now for Trip Leaders to use WhatsApp to post daily bulletins and distribute important information to group members. So you may essentially be forced to sign up for WhatsApp, at least for the duration of your trip.

This means the big question is how much time, effort, and expense you are willing to expend to mitigate the privacy impact of using WA. At one extreme, you could buy a tablet, laptop, or phone that would be dedicated to WA, setup with information different from your existing devices, and only used when you are traveling. On the other hand, signing up for WA with a disposable email address and a virtual phone number wouldn’t cost much but would tie your Meta dossier to your device(s). And, of course, there are many things you can do that are in between those two options.

In any case, I’m pretty privacy focused. While having to use WA for a couple of weeks is not something I would choose for myself, I actually regard other group members posting and tagging photos I appear in to be a bigger privacy risk than the WA app adding to whatever info Meta knows about me.

3

You don’t need a Facebook account for WhatsApp. Only a phone. Your “userid” is your phone number. If you ever change phone numbers it will ask if you want to keep the same account.

3 Likes
4

No. They are separate logins and separate accounts.

WhatsApp accounts are typically associated with a phone number, so people who have your number can contact you with it (voice, video or text).

You can. Here’s an article about what happens if you do and why you may or may not want to delete the account:

Of course, Meta may be lying, and might retain your data after you “delete” the account. If you don’t trust them (as I don’t), you may want to self-censor what you send to others and avoid sending anything you don’t want Meta to see.

As for visibility to the world, WhatsApp doesn’t have (as far as I know) a search feature to find people. But accounts are tied to mobile phone numbers. So if someone has your phone number, they can call/message you. This does mean you will get spam, just like you do today using the phone system, but it’s not like FaceBook, where anyone who knows a fragment of your name can perform a search and find your account.

The WhatsApp app on iOS will request access to your contacts. You can block this and the app will work, but it uses these contacts in order to associate names with phone numbers. If you block access, everybody you contact will show up as just a phone number. If you grant access, then it will create entries in Contacts for people you communicate with. Which means you’ll have their names and phone numbers available system-wide. If you don’t want this, then don’t grant it access and recognize that you will only see phone numbers in your chats and call history.

For what it’s worth, I was in a similar situation a few years ago - a tour group wanted us all to join a WhatsApp group chat. I did. I don’t use the app much today, but I still have the account, because it lets me go back and review the content of that group chat long after the trip ended (people on the tour shared photos there).

It’s also a good way to call people when traveling, since voice/video calls to other WhatsApp users are data calls. So you won’t incur international roaming charges on your cell phone when you have Wi-Fi connectivity.

10 Likes
5

Thanks for the clear, detailed, practical summary, Dave.
Your posts are always so well written. The time you take to save our time is appreciated.

5 Likes
6

WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted using the Signal protocol, so all that Meta can see is metadata - who sends messages to whom and when.

7

Yes, that is why I view WA’s privacy risks to be centered around device, identity, and behavior tracking by both Meta and advertising networks, rather than message content mining.

1 Like
8

Thanks for all of the info on this. It puts my concerns a little bit at rest. Still will prefer Signal as a messaging app and will probably delete my WA account after I use it.

How is advertising affected by use on the app? This is something that will show up on regular web browsing? I am fascinated how these networks are all connected.

Also, I will probably use alosim or a similar product when I travel overseas, do they assign you a new phone number when you use it? Can I use that for WA or does it have to be your actual phone number (though my current phone uses an eSIM)?

9

For anybody interested in privacy and how the commercial Internet affects privacy, here are some decent starting points (IMHO):

(good primer from a New York Times-owned product review site)

(book from a well-respected security and privacy researcher)

(a more academically flavored look at how companies monetize users)

ETA: a recent Wired article that tells how online advertising is used to compile dossiers on individuals.

3 Likes
10

Unless someone receiving a message (which could be a lot of people if it’s a group chat, including people you don’t know, if it’s a tour group or something) decides to report a message to Meta. In which case, their moderators get a copy, which they may hold on to forever.

Personally, although Meta says there are no back doors, they have lied to the public in the past, so I assume they’re lying today if they say anything good about themselves.

You have to use your own judgment, of course, but I would assume that anything you post to any Meta service may be intercepted and examined with or without a reason, and that Meta may retain that content forever, giving or selling it to anyone they want to.

So, by all means, use WhatsApp, but don’t assume any particular amount of privacy, especially if you’re using it in a group-chat scenario.

2 Likes
11

@raykloss , I’m with you on this topic, and find it sad that the tour operator/group wants to put you in this bind just to participate in the tour/be informed as it goes along.
I’ve tried to put myself in your shoes and develop some workarounds.

  • Can you do the tour with a different ‘educational tour’ (or what they’re called) company that is more flexible on informing? (I’ve heard of others but long ago and can’t recall the names)
  • If you have access to email or texting during the trip would the group leader be willing to inform you that way?
  • Can you provide the leader with a stack of index cards and a pen and ask for a daily note?
  • If none of that is possible, consider what others have suggested, get a burner phone/sim/plan that works where you’re going and set it up for the trip only. If you want the content of WA messages from fellow travelers, maybe you could copy/paste or download or forward to a burner email account and then to yourself, or into the Signal Note to Self feature.
  • I haven’t used WA since before it became FB so not sure how it would affect ads/future browsing etc. I read a lot of complaints about ads but I see very few, perhaps because of browser extensions, and I am not on ‘social media’ (unless Talk counts!).
  • Never heard of alosim and haven’t used an eSIM so no ideas there.
  • If a laptop suffices, configure a separate User Account and delete it after the trip (but maybe WA on a laptop has to be connected to a phone number…?)
    Hope some of that helps and looking forward to the eventual best-compromise solution!
1 Like
12

Sure. It seems an unlikely scenario in the case of a group chat among a group of vacationers.

That ars article does contain some weird what ifs with no indication that these things really happen. Meta could use the mobile app to flag messages automatically. Well - did they find any indication that this was happening?

So a group of older vacationers communicating with each other over WhatsApp? It’ll be fine. As you suggest, don’t allow the sop to scan and upload your contacts.

3 Likes
13

I don’t think you’ll be able to come up with a perfect solution here. Email and texting aren’t secure either, and using a laptop with local wifi would be problematic. I’d say set WhatsApp up for the trip (I do wonder if a Google Voice number would be a good temporary expedient?), use it just for that, and then delete it when you get back.

(As someone who’s led a tour like this, we always had an analog announcement at the beginning of each day – usually me or the tour manager standing at the front of the bus talking – and then sent it out to a WhatsApp group. People forget, don’t listen, etc., so having some accessible recorded form of it was good.)

1 Like
14

Plus after group activities have finished for the day and during on-your-own times.

1 Like
15

I agree it’s bad to be forced to use a service or product but it is all too common these days even in daily life, not just vacations. Want to know what is going on in your neighborhood? Gotta sign up for Nextdoor. That webinar that sounds interesting? Need to download Zoom. That’s the power of network effects.

For travel groups, I can see why WhatsApp has become a standard. Mobile phones are ubiquitous across all age groups. WA is available for both Android and iOS. The typical demographic for group travel—retirees—isn’t on Slack. Phone calls and SMS can cost people on non-premium mobile phone plans lots of money, especially if they are outside of their home countries. And perhaps most importantly, huge numbers of people are already using Meta’s products so Trip Leaders don’t have to spend a lot of time giving tutorials or tech support. As @silbey probably knows, leading and guiding tours truly is a 24-7 job so making communicating to the group as efficient as possible helps make the other, fun, parts of a trip better.

2 Likes
16

Outside the US, in a more mixed Android and iPhone environment, most folks use WA without thinking. I would say even more than texting. Avoiding it, in my experience, is impossible.

7 Likes
17

One other idea, is that if tour leader is unwilling to accomodate non WAers, if you’re already acquainted with someone on the tour (or are good at quickly making friends), see if they’ll be an ‘information buddy’ you might say, and relay/show the WA info to you along the way. That would be a courteous, helpful compromise.
I remember being on some bus tours in the early 1990s in Europe and we didn’t have mobile phones, laptops etc. Film and video cameras, printed tour books, printed maps, perhaps printed itineraries, and… conversation! And somehow we stayed on schedule and didn’t get lost!

4 Likes
18

As for virtual phone number, I just yesterday tried to register an account with WhatsApp using Google Voice number and it was rejected. So, this is not an option.

1 Like
19

Which meant that your tour manager had to get up massively early every morning, type out an itinerary and then find a place to print out a large number of copies, announce any changes after the printing (and hope people picked up on them), and have no way to get in touch with people if they weren’t physically present, which often meant heading out to where they thought people might be in hopes of tracking them down.

The flexibility and security that digital methods of communication have changed things dramatically for the better. I understand the privacy concerns, but I don’t want to lose sight of the enormous advantages.

Ah, well. Too bad. Thanks for checking.

2 Likes
20

Too bad. That means using a secondary SIM or eSIM when traveling may be the easiest way to avoid giving a main phone number to WhatsApp/Meta.

In any case, unless a new WA user uses a “burner” phone or a dedicated laptop/tablet/computer, Meta will be able to profile and track the registered device no matter what type of phone number is used.
:frowning:

ETA: I also feel that unless I already knew somebody well, I wouldn’t want to take on the ongoing responsibility for relaying important trip information. That’s a pretty big ask for a lot of reasons.