Agree or Exit - This is what is an ultimatum from WhatsApp and we need to agree to its condition by Feb 8, 2021 if we want to enjoy its services. WhatsApp wants us to agree to allow sharing of our data with its parent company, Facebook. That’s it. 

This condition has sounded an alarm among users about the privacy of their information in the hands of Facebook. Obviously, media is full of views and messages such as - 'Time to Say Goodbye to WhatsApp', ‘Let us switch to Telegram or Signal’ and so on. Let us see what it means for us and what should we do.

Which data WhatsApp is going to share with Facebook?

All messages that we share on WhatApp platform are in two parts – Content and MetaData. To understand it better, let us draw a similarity with the delivery of our physical letters sent in an envelope through Post Offices. Here the ‘content’ is sealed inside the envelope which is not visible to anyone except the addressee. The details such as Sender’s and Receiver’s addresses, locations, Date and time stamps are visible to the postal staff. In the same way, the content of our messages on WhatsApp is encrypted End-to-End and is not stored or used by WhatsApp. All that WhatsApp stores are our MetaData - numbers contacted, the number of times of such connects, date and time, duration, IP addresses (revealing the location of sender/receivers) etc. For those who transact money through WhatsApp platform, the metadata may include the transaction details also.

Why Facebook needs this data?

Facebook acquired WhatsApp at a hefty amount ($19 billion) with a clear plan of boosting its revenue through WhatsApp’s huge subscription and usage. One of the strategies of its chief, Mark Zuckerberg was to offer services by which companies will be able to interact with their desired customer in a very personal and direct way using the Meta Data of WhatsApp. This strategy is what is being implemented now. It is estimated that by correlating the WhatsApp Meta Data and Facebook data, huge personalised information can be obtained that could be sold to business houses for making personalised advertisements and sale. 

Alternative before us

Now that with this development most of us have started thinking of moving to other messaging platforms, let’s see what alternatives we have.

Telegram and Signal are the two best alternatives before us. Let us briefly know about them:

Telegram:

Like WhatsApp, it also supports E2E encryption (content encryption) but that is not enabled by default. The only way to use E2E encryption on Telegram is to use its secret chats feature. Even in secret chats, Telegram uses its own proprietary encryption protocol, MTProto, to encrypt the messages. From a security point of view, a closed-source protocol is not liked by security researchers as they can’t verify it. 

From an ownership point of view, which gives a factor of trust, Telegram is owned by two Russian, Durov brothers. Both have a principled position against censorship and Government interference and are known to have refused to hand over data of Ukrainian protesters to Russia’s security agencies. This does inspire trust.

Hence whereas the security is not as trusted as WhatsApp, the ownership is well trusted.

Signal

While WhatsApp encrypts the content, Signal goes one step further and encrypts the metadata too. In order to protect user privacy from all corners, Signal devised a new way to communicate between the sender and the recipient and it’s called Sealed Sender. Basically, with Sealed Sender, no one will be able to know — not even Signal — who is messaging whom, which is amazing. 

From an ownership point of view, Signal is owned by the Signal Foundation, a non-profit organization.

Hence whereas security in Signal is amazing, there is not enough clarity on who funds Signal Foundation. There are many rumours on this.

What should we do – Soul Searching?

Our decision should be based on some soul-searching:

• Have we not shared and allowed other Apps (e.g , Truecaller or for that matter any other App) to use such private data? Most of the free Apps or even paid ones can be installed only on an agreement that the data provided by us will be allowed to be shared with other vendors for commercial use. Did we stop there? 
• Do we know what Google knows about us even without we supplying such information to them directly? By keeping track of the Google services that we use, it knows all about us – our location, our likings, how much we walked or travelled, what we bought. It can even predict what we are likely to do in the next few days by correlating various activities of ours on the Internet and by obtaining any services of Internet-based businesses. Eyes will pop out if you search ‘What Google Knows About Me’ and read it further! 
• If we are on the Facebook platform, is it not true that most of our so-called private data is already with them? All that availability of WhatsApp data will do, is to boost their business since the correlation of both data will have many business-related bits of intelligence that can be sold to the third party at a higher cost.
• Don’t we all know how these free services are so profitable? Is it not obvious that they earn from the user’s data?
• Is it not the fact that many Law Enforcement Authorities crack complex criminal cases based on these ‘Meta Data’ provided by such platforms? Remember WhatsApp provided data involved that of Mufid Elfghee, one of the first ISIS recruiters to be arrested on U.S. soil? He not only attempted to send men and money to ISIS in Syria. Elfghee was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison in March 2016.

Our Decision

Our decision to continue with WhatsApp or to move to any other messaging platform depends on what we use them for.

Normal User. As a normal user, if we are not involved in chats/calls/forwards that are illegal, there is nothing that will harm us more if we remain on WhatsApp.  In fact, we will get more personalised business advertisements than the bombardment of general advertisements that we presently face.

However, if we use WhatsApp Pay features and do financial transactions, then we should probably think of either stop using this feature or move to Signal.

Business Users. The WhatsApp Metadata along with Facebook data may provide Facebook with many undue intelligence data which could lead to business advantage to rivals. Hence such users should think of moving to a safer platform such as Signal.

Govt/Research/Corporate Users: They too should think of moving to platforms such as Signal.

Conclusion

From a business point of view, there is nothing wrong in what WhatsApp is doing. Knowing that WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, didn’t we know that the ownership of WhatsApp-held data has shifted to Facebook? By dint of this ownership, it is for sure that WhatsApp data is already accessible to Facebook. All that WhatsApp is doing now is making it more transparent to its users, which is worthy of appreciation. As a normal user of WhatsApp, the risk of using WhatsApp remains the same even after agreeing to its condition. With certain self-restraint (lawful transactions) there is hardly any benefit that we would get by shifting to other platforms. In any case, shifting our entire network of people or groups to a new platform will be a challenge.

Agree or Exit - This is what is an ultimatum from WhatsApp and we need to agree to its condition by Feb 8, 2021 if we want to enjoy its services. WhatsApp wants us to agree to allow sharing of our data with its parent company, Facebook. That’s it. 

This condition has sounded an alarm among users about the privacy of their information in the hands of Facebook. Obviously, media is full of views and messages such as - 'Time to Say Goodbye to WhatsApp', ‘Let us switch to Telegram or Signal’ and so on. Let us see what it means for us and what should we do.

Which data WhatsApp is going to share with Facebook?

All messages that we share on WhatApp platform are in two parts – Content and MetaData. To understand it better, let us draw a similarity with the delivery of our physical letters sent in an envelope through Post Offices. Here the ‘content’ is sealed inside the envelope which is not visible to anyone except the addressee. The details such as Sender’s and Receiver’s addresses, locations, Date and time stamps are visible to the postal staff. In the same way, the content of our messages on WhatsApp is encrypted End-to-End and is not stored or used by WhatsApp. All that WhatsApp stores are our MetaData - numbers contacted, the number of times of such connects, date and time, duration, IP addresses (revealing the location of sender/receivers) etc. For those who transact money through WhatsApp platform, the metadata may include the transaction details also.

Why Facebook needs this data?

Facebook acquired WhatsApp at a hefty amount ($19 billion) with a clear plan of boosting its revenue through WhatsApp’s huge subscription and usage. One of the strategies of its chief, Mark Zuckerberg was to offer services by which companies will be able to interact with their desired customer in a very personal and direct way using the Meta Data of WhatsApp. This strategy is what is being implemented now. It is estimated that by correlating the WhatsApp Meta Data and Facebook data, huge personalised information can be obtained that could be sold to business houses for making personalised advertisements and sale. 

Alternative before us

Now that with this development most of us have started thinking of moving to other messaging platforms, let’s see what alternatives we have.

Telegram and Signal are the two best alternatives before us. Let us briefly know about them:

Telegram:

Like WhatsApp, it also supports E2E encryption (content encryption) but that is not enabled by default. The only way to use E2E encryption on Telegram is to use its secret chats feature. Even in secret chats, Telegram uses its own proprietary encryption protocol, MTProto, to encrypt the messages. From a security point of view, a closed-source protocol is not liked by security researchers as they can’t verify it. 

From an ownership point of view, which gives a factor of trust, Telegram is owned by two Russian, Durov brothers. Both have a principled position against censorship and Government interference and are known to have refused to hand over data of Ukrainian protesters to Russia’s security agencies. This does inspire trust.

Hence whereas the security is not as trusted as WhatsApp, the ownership is well trusted.

Signal

While WhatsApp encrypts the content, Signal goes one step further and encrypts the metadata too. In order to protect user privacy from all corners, Signal devised a new way to communicate between the sender and the recipient and it’s called Sealed Sender. Basically, with Sealed Sender, no one will be able to know — not even Signal — who is messaging whom, which is amazing. 

From an ownership point of view, Signal is owned by the Signal Foundation, a non-profit organization.

Hence whereas security in Signal is amazing, there is not enough clarity on who funds Signal Foundation. There are many rumours on this.

What should we do – Soul Searching?

Our decision should be based on some soul-searching:

• Have we not shared and allowed other Apps (e.g , Truecaller or for that matter any other App) to use such private data? Most of the free Apps or even paid ones can be installed only on an agreement that the data provided by us will be allowed to be shared with other vendors for commercial use. Did we stop there? 
• Do we know what Google knows about us even without we supplying such information to them directly? By keeping track of the Google services that we use, it knows all about us – our location, our likings, how much we walked or travelled, what we bought. It can even predict what we are likely to do in the next few days by correlating various activities of ours on the Internet and by obtaining any services of Internet-based businesses. Eyes will pop out if you search ‘What Google Knows About Me’ and read it further! 
• If we are on the Facebook platform, is it not true that most of our so-called private data is already with them? All that availability of WhatsApp data will do, is to boost their business since the correlation of both data will have many business-related bits of intelligence that can be sold to the third party at a higher cost.
• Don’t we all know how these free services are so profitable? Is it not obvious that they earn from the user’s data?
• Is it not the fact that many Law Enforcement Authorities crack complex criminal cases based on these ‘Meta Data’ provided by such platforms? Remember WhatsApp provided data involved that of Mufid Elfghee, one of the first ISIS recruiters to be arrested on U.S. soil? He not only attempted to send men and money to ISIS in Syria. Elfghee was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison in March 2016.

Our Decision

Our decision to continue with WhatsApp or to move to any other messaging platform depends on what we use them for.

Normal User. As a normal user, if we are not involved in chats/calls/forwards that are illegal, there is nothing that will harm us more if we remain on WhatsApp.  In fact, we will get more personalised business advertisements than the bombardment of general advertisements that we presently face.

However, if we use WhatsApp Pay features and do financial transactions, then we should probably think of either stop using this feature or move to Signal.

Business Users. The WhatsApp Metadata along with Facebook data may provide Facebook with many undue intelligence data which could lead to business advantage to rivals. Hence such users should think of moving to a safer platform such as Signal.

Govt/Research/Corporate Users: They too should think of moving to platforms such as Signal.

Conclusion

From a business point of view, there is nothing wrong in what WhatsApp is doing. Knowing that WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, didn’t we know that the ownership of WhatsApp-held data has shifted to Facebook? By dint of this ownership, it is for sure that WhatsApp data is already accessible to Facebook. All that WhatsApp is doing now is making it more transparent to its users, which is worthy of appreciation. As a normal user of WhatsApp, the risk of using WhatsApp remains the same even after agreeing to its condition. With certain self-restraint (lawful transactions) there is hardly any benefit that we would get by shifting to other platforms. In any case, shifting our entire network of people or groups to a new platform will be a challenge.