What do you want advice about?
I want advice about a preferred way to stop using WhatsApp
What have you considered or looked at already?
I have already thought about deleting my account cold turkey. But I ‘require’ WhatsApp for two different school groupchats. I don’t really, but I will probably get a lot of questions as to why I did it from classmates. So I should maybe prepare for that. I am curious as to how others who have succeeded in deleting their WhatsApp account have done this.
In brief, tell us about your privacy threat model?
I want to minimize the amount of data collected by companies mainly. I want to prevent advertisers and corporations such as Google to be able to target me with advertisments as much as realistically possible. One of my end goals is to not use a smartphone at all, but I require a phone number currently sadly.
I then went back to WhatsApp as they at least claim to use E2EE, unlike SMS.
I have my my mom, my dad and my best friend on Signal which is great. My brother recently stopped using Signal because he did not use it much. That is also part of the reason I want to delete WhatsApp so he can only message me for free on Signal. But it is kind of a gamble because he could start using SMS which is more insecure as you mentioned.
I see little point in deleting your WhatsApp account. It provides you with a means of securing your communications with some of your contacts. It offers better privacy protections than regular SMS messages or unencrypted email.
Instead, I would keep WhatsApp but consider denying the app access to your contacts. And then, to the extent possible, I would use other, more private means of communications.
Apart from Signal, you might also look to other apps including Session, Wire, Threema, Briar, and Jami.
I see little point in deleting your WhatsApp account. It provides you with a means of securing your communications with some of your contacts. It offers better privacy protections than regular SMS messages or unencrypted email.
I agree. My classmates have started using Discord as an alternative so it is even worse, since it has no encryption. When I end up with a new project group I think I will delete my WhatsApp account and urge people to just use Microsoft Teams since it communication about school is not that valuable to me to hide.
Instead, I would keep WhatsApp but consider denying the app access to your contacts. And then, to the extent possible, I would use other, more private means of communications.
I already deny access to my contacts, but it would not really help that much since all the other people I chat with do share there contacts with WhatsApp. So that means all the contact information will be in Meta’s hands at the end of the day. I have suggested people to switch to Signal or Session, but without much success except with family and close friends. I could improve my reasoning and argumentation as to why I suggest to move platforms, but I think deep down my classmates care to little about me to download an app. Not as if there is anything wrong with that, since no one owes me anything but more to give context.
Apart from Signal, you might also look to other apps including Session, Wire, Threema, Briar, and Jami.
I like Session, Briar and Jami. And have used them all to test them out. But Wire is quite privacy unfriendly for my taste. And Threema costs money which would be even harder to make people convince to use. Even if I where to gift them the application.
They are insecure/leaks metadata/uses homegrown cryptographic protocol.
Please stop suggesting people looking for privacy anything other than Signal, Threema or Briar. Different Apps use different cryptographic protocols. Test of time has announced Signal Protocol to be the clear winner and all other protocols have been cracked(Telegram) or leaks metadata(Matrix,Wire…)
I made an announcement 2 days before the deletion. Then I wiped the account. Since online classes were going on, school mostly meant WhatsApp groups and video calls, I had to suffer through proprietary Google Meet. Many people like friends and teachers were upset, even mad at me. Then again, they can’t force me to use a service. Your privacy is yours. You do you buddy.
I am in a similar situation, but instead of Google Meet it will be Microsoft Teams and Discord. But I will keep it strictly about school stuff on those platforms so it will not be to bad. Eventually I will have gotten rid of my last Meta service and have made progress. It sucks that friends and teachers were upset and even mad at you. That is so ridiculous. I am probably going to delete my WhatsApp account in the next vacation in about a week. So it will hopefully be less awkward. You are completely right man. Thanks, I needed to see your comment for some reason to just do it.
RCS is end to end encrypted, but collects lots of metadata. And every phone doesn’t have RCS by default. For example, Samsung and OnePlus phones still come with a different messenger app, and you need to use Google Messages to get the RCS capabilities. I don’t use RCS because it associates my phone number and chats to my Google Account. But I still use Google Messages, without RCS, because that’s what my phone came with, and it works best with my phone. Most of my communications are on Signal or WhatsApp, I try to use SMS as less as possible.
A while ago, I used this FOSS app which would access my WhatsApp account in WhatsApp web, as a webview. It was a fine experience, except my phone wouldn’t ring for calls or create new contacts. You can try using WhatsApp as a progressive web app on your phone. You can still message people and do calls on the web app.
I really admire you being able to not using any Google Play Services. I’m a GrapheneOS user too and recently attempted to not install Google Play Services but I ended up having to install them because of 2 things :
1/ my banking app have to have Play Store installed/Play Services and because my bank uses the app as a form of “passkeys” (not really but basically when I try to login on a computer the bank send a notification in the app I have to accept it to login to the other device, can’t turn that off) it means I can’t just uninstall it and use my computer instead.
2/ notifications/background refresh : I admit I do not understand all the technical details on this specific topic but as I understand “a lot” of apps would need the Google Play Services to be installed in order to function properly with notifications and background activity. When I had Google Play Services not installed Signal was freaking out telling me it won’t be able to receive new messages unless I’ll have the app running in the foreground.
For the issue number 1 I could create a new profile just for banking app. But what about issue number 2 ? What is your workaround here ? I used Signal as an example (I know I could try to install Molly-Foss which is not relying on Google Services for background refresh and notifications) but what about all the other apps which may stop refreshing in the background/stop notifications (thinking about Protonmail app for example not sure if they uses Google Play Services for that ? or Bitwarden I understand it may not be syncing automatically, what about Mastodon ? VoIP apps etc. ?) . So really curious about your experience because I’d love achieving the same level of degoogling
I just made a couple PSAs when I deleted mine, and this was right after their so-calldd “privacy policy” was changed to allow Fakebook to eat your cobtact information 2 years ago. I sent out a PSA in the early AM that I was going to delete it later that very day and to find me on Signal if they wanted to continue talking to me. My account was gone at noon.
At the moment, I don’t use whatsapp at all for anything personal as everyone I care about is on signal. Before, I did use whatsapp, and only quit as people moved. I’d often just suggest moving somewhere better (signal) and if they didn’t want to move that was fine. I also tried just being less available on whatsapp and more available on signal, which partially worked.
Deleting whatsapp isn’t really a smart thing to do (especially where I live), but I only use it for work contacts, and I’d consider only using it from a PC with a VM as a compromise. People will eventually realise it’s easier to contact you through signal and do that, or you end up left out.
This reply is kind of disorganised, but I’ve given all of my thoughts on the issue, and what works for my circle might not work for yours.
