I’m in Europe, where everyone seemingly uses WhatsApp for their communications, and I’m having to jump on the bandwagon as the people I’ve met give me that number to contact them. However, I don’t want to share Apple’s Contact address book with WhatsApp as it contains sensitive information that I don’t want to share with Meta – friends and families’ private addresses, birthdates, anniversaries, personal email addresses, private notes, etc. I’d like to create an address specifically for WhatApp that only contains the information that I’ve provided it, and that doesn’t sync with Apple’s Contacts.
I’ve poked around a bit online, looking for solutions, but I haven’t found anything that really works for me. Do any of you have a solution that you’ve implemented that works well or other options that I might try?
You have three choices: either don’t share contacts and just have their numbers, share only those contacts (“limited”) that you want to use with WhatsApp (that’s an option with iOS - Settings / Privacy / Contacts / WhatsApp / Limited and then choose them), or do the same, but first create duplicated contacts that have minimal information (first name or nickname without the last name and their number and that’s it.)
Meta already knows that they have WhatsApp, of course, so you’re not leaking too much information that way.
I have the same dilemma. Duplicated contacts is a good idea, then only share those with Whatsapp. Maybe having an identifier (WA-surname ?) in their name so iOS doesn’t get confused for other operations.