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Comment by Djvacto | Hacker News Reader

So, I use WhatsApp as my primary source of communication.

Knowing facebook owned it always made me a little nervous, but given that it was end-to-end encrypted, I figured Facebook wasn't getting any more from me then they would from all my facebook-using-friends who would send me SMS's before.

But I'm worried about how long I can continue to use the service moving forward, which is sad as this is my main way to communicate with relatives who live in other countries. And I doubt I can convince an elderly relative to switch to Signal, as we're still working on teaching her how everything in WhatsApp works.

I also recently purchased an Oculus. I like it way more than the current Vive revisions (although I want to have a non-HTC headset and Valve Knuckles as my next VR set), but the fact that it's owned by facebook unsettles me as well.

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I totally understand. You are facing the classic dilemma of privacy vs convenience. Personally, I distrusted facebook so much that I have avoided any of their products since 2013. Obviously a major win for my privacy, but it sacrificed some convenience -- then I had no real-time way to communicate with my relative in India.

In the end, you'll have to do some introspection to see if the convenience gained is worth the privacy lost. How essential is it that you communicate in real-time with your relatives? Would your relationship be substantially different if you sent email or wrote letters?

At this point, it isn't about privacy vs. convenience, it's about privacy vs. being able to have a social life. People aren't going to install a more privacy-supportive messenger just for you, they'll gradually let you drop out of their lives just like you would with a friend that you can only reach by driving to their farm 6 hours away.

Replace convenience with whatever benefit you see most pertinent. That is your trade-off. For me, convenience is the most frequent benefit.

People had social lives before facebook existed... it largely consisted of going places and seeing people regularly. This still works, believe it or not.

It's definitely tough, but a big perk of WhatsApp is also the data-calls (instead of paying for long-distance). Maybe next time I visit I can try to help convince them to check out something new, but I also ended up dragging a couple of social groups onto WhatsApp to organize events, chat, etc just by viture of it being what most people use. Especially over in Europe, it's very heavily used and not easy to replace, as it's sometimes the de-facto platform for communication.

But it's definitely a trade-off, so I at least kind of have a choice.

I find it much easier to not communicate with FB properties, period. That way I only worry that my IP tables are up to date.

I also realize other peoples' choice of family/friends make that hard for them. (My FB-addict-mother and I email, and at this point even the passive-aggressive bits about not seeing pictures has stopped.)

But if you can, I can attest that the internet is a much nicer place with a big hole where FB (and similar hostile entities) used to be.

This is why I moved to Signal after the whole brexit/us election saga. open source and not run by an advertising company

I have been hearing a lot of good things about signal... How are their servers paid for though if it's a free service?

"supported by grants and donations" according to their site.

Why is everyone doing business with a black and white strategy? On one extreme, everything is free and funded by selling user information and on the other extreme, everthing is free but funded by donation. What is wrong with 2$/year model? Everyone (I mean truly everyone) is willing to pay that.

I disagree, some very poor people most likely prefer the ads then parting with 2$. One thing people forget about advertising it is a pretty good at price discriminating. Ads to rich people are worth more than ads to poor people so advertisers can make more money from those with more money to spend while still serving everyone.

WhatsApp's $1/year charge only applied in certain (rich) countries.

It's hard enough to get people to switch from whatsapp when signal is free.

Messaging apps, like social media services need your friends to be on the platform for it to be useful. If you start putting friction into that process then the services are instantly not useful. Everyone of your friends that doesn't join makes that thing much less useful for you.

You say "everyone" is willing to pay that. I'll tell people about an amazing app that solves their problems they are complaining about and they go and see it's a couple dollars (one time purchase) and still complain and usually don't buy it.

There will never be a popular messaging service or social network that relies on subscriptions (maybe subscriptions for additional features though)

Would agree with your sentiment, but Whatsapp itself is an example of a messaging service that relied on their 1$/year model and had around 200 million active users before it went free.

They started charging after they had achieved scale.

No, it cost 1$ from the very beginning on iOS.

I wouldn't say they "relied" on it. It was not enforced at all (lots of people used it without paying $1) and they sold out to Facebook. It would have been interesting to see how things played out if they had stayed independent.

I think the issue is more if you ask for any amount of money it immediately turns people off.

The process of putting in your creditcard number, entering your password for google play/paypal/etc is just enough of a barrier to go 'whatever!'.

Threema is doing something like that: https://threema.ch/en

According to this article, somehow prosecutors were able to retrieve deleted WhatsApp messages.

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/five-ind...

So I see it mention that they were in trouble for deleting "potentiall incriminating" conversations. Are there any details or other articles that confirm the deleted messages were retrieved?

Ditto, the linked article indicates only that the parties had deleted a conversation between them at a critical moment, but not that the specific content of that conversation could be known.

I installed Signal a while back and tried to convince as many people as possible to switch. But only 7 people in my contact list have Signal installed. Even when communicating with those 7 people i tend to use WhatsApp because i tend to process all my messages at once without switching apps.

I'm doing the same, and I only have 10 people. They happen to be my favorite 10 people, but still only 10.

I think Signal or something of that nature will be the ultimate endgame for communication systems. They're way too easy to make, they're cheap to maintain, and they're hard to monetize without being scummy. This is the perfect formula for a non-profit to step in. I think the WhatsApp founders alone could maintain a worldwide textual communication network for the rest of their lives using a small fraction of their wealth.

It seems to be inevitable that the "scummy" ones finish first. Deskop Linux could have been more popular than Windows, GIMP more popular than Photoshop and Signal more popular than WhatsApp if only they where first. But the Open Source world always lags behind when it comes to developing new stuff for ordinary consumers.

My strategy is to use it for planning birthday parties. Gets lots of people in for planning big group "secrets", and then they stick with the app afterwards.

Telegram is the natural replacement for WhatsApp - very similar, but so much nicer.

I also use Signal ( and about 10 other messaging apps ) and while good, it’s a little rough around the edges and needs improvement.

Facebook having access to your contacts and maybe location too is still scary.

That's true as well. I recently deactivated my (unused for years) facebook account, but this is definitely something else to think about.

Sure it's end-to-end encrypted.. But Facebook doesn't have to get in the middle to look at your messages. Facebook is sitting at both ends, reading the messages after they are decrypted. It is already monetizing these messages and the ads are shown in Facebook instead of Whatsapp. Whether the opt-out functionality for this feature is honored properly by Facebook I'm not sure.

It's not end-to-end if Facebook can read them after they are delivered.

Facebook only have access to the metadata.

> but given that it was end-to-end encrypted, ...

FB, via the WhatsApp app, have access to your unencrypted messages before the app encrypts them and sends them on. So, there's reason to worry now that FB is in full control. I have no doubt they'll extract data from your conversations and inject targeted ads.

Edit: Am I wrong? Do they not have access to the plain text?

With regards to your edit, yes, you are wrong. And I don't mean that in a harsh way, just answering your question.

From WhatsApp themselves [0]: "WhatsApp end-to-end encryption ensures only you and the person you're communicating with can read what's sent, and nobody in between, not even WhatsApp. Your messages are secured with locks, and only the recipient and you have the special keys needed to unlock and read your messages."

[0] https://faq.whatsapp.com/en/general/28030015

That is end to end from your phone to their phone, and they are talking about 3rd parties outside the app. As your physically typing the the information into the chat message box, and before you send it, the app itself should have access to the plain text coming from the keyboard, which it then encrypts before it leaves your phone.

Similarly it needs decrypted on the other side and displayed to the other user, at which time the app again has accesd to clear text versions.

I don't believe there's any way to encrypt the message before the app sends the message / while it is displaying to the recipient

Of course, there must be plaintext at some point... I don't understand this line of reasoning.

WhatsApp tells their users and more importantly the US Gov they do not have any access to the message content itself. For this attack surface to be an issue, that would mean WhatsApp is telling a bold faced lie, secretly exfiltrating the plaintext to a 3rd party, and doing so without getting caught by any black-box auditing.

Hmm once you teach someone to use WhatsApp, another messaging app shouldn't be that hard to learn. I believe FB have been very careful to prevent misusing WhatsApp platform (or have been very good at keeping the misuse secret lol); if word got out that they were it would certainly lead to a huge exodus.

The problem is what they've learned is mostly to do with what icons (which they have no context for, never having used a computer or smartphone prior to this) they press to get certain results. And we teach them this over an audio call, so trying to learn a new one would definitely be a challenge.

But overall I would swap back to different apps were WhatsApp to be 'compromised' or misused. Discord text chat for my gaming group, Signal for some tech chats, etc.

Overall it's a shame, since I was very appreciative of the approach the Whats-App founders took. But if we're lucky, WhatsApp will remain mostly the same for a while.

For many this is probably true.

For my 84 year old neighbour, not so. He regularly pops round for help with sharing a picture on WhatsApp.

It's beyond my neighbour's ability to learn how to use WhatsApp correctly. Learning another messaging app for him is not an option.

Wrt changing to signal, just say 'it got an update' and switch it out to where the icon used to be. Provided the rest of your family switched it shouldn't be too difficult

Surely they’re getting a lot more info. Whatsapp demand complete access to your Contacts to work properly. So they know your full name and address, your bank, the names addresses and perhaps jobs of your friends and colleagues etc.

How do they get bank?

maybe because they have it as a contact?

Only to send messages to your contacts; if you deny whatsapp access you can still respond to anyone that contacts you

You just can't be the first person to start the conversation

As, I say "to work properly".

I can't send a message to anyone, without giving it access to everyone. How daft is that.

For all the rap it gets for its own crypto, I would still recommend Telegram as an alternative because of its superior UX. It shouldn’t be very difficult to move from WhatsApp to Telegram (of course, I do understand that people who are not used to technology much may have difficulties).

I wouldn’t recommend Signal to anyone who’s not paranoid about privacy and security. It still needs to improve a lot on UX, reliability and many other fronts.

signal UX is great!

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