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Comment by philipwhiuk | Hacker News Reader

> Newton-Rex said privacy is “in the DNA” of WhatsApp and that the company is trying to clearly communicate with users about what privacy protections WhatsApp offers and where.

This is bunk. If someone is added to a Group Chat they get everyone's phone number. There's near zero privacy for Groups and Communities.

This sort of article is a puff-piece for WhatsApp.

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My understanding is groups and communities are for people who already know each other directly or indirectly, like a mutual friend or parents of students of the same class.

WhatsApp for Business is something separate from this.

You want all the parents in your kid’s class to know your phone number? No thanks

Yes? Phone numbers are not top secret information. My schools always had a student directory that listed every student's home phone number and their parents' mobiles. We used to have phone books that listed everyone in town's phone number.

Back then, phone calls were expensive and my time/attention was cheap. Now phone calls are cheap and there's so many things I'd rather do than answer robocalls and anxious parents.

You know phone numbers used to be public, all of them, and printed in books?

Expectations about privacy has changed since this time.

That and the random "group invite" I get that pedals crypto. Spam and my number being disclosed to a bunch of random victims!

Also, it won’t work properly unless you give it full access to your Contacts

I noticed last year it stopped allowing me to use location sharing if I have the permission set to ask every time. It wants the permission permanently enabled.

It seems like they're trying to get people to enable extra permissions beyond what it really needs.

At least on iOS it works fine without contacts. You'll have to enter all numbers manually, but messaging works as expected. On android it's more annoying, because there's no way to explicitly enter phone numbers, but you can use the wa.me/[insert phone phone number here] to work around it.

This has been recently added, but Whatsapp if famous for being inconsistent and slow with feature rollouts

I know they stagger quite a bit, I can't even fathom pulling off their scale on so many variations of devices, keeping an indeterminate amount of versions all working in unison, so can't blame them either

It did. Till it didn't - one day, after an update, it just refused to work without full access to contacts. (On ios).

Don't set a prefered app for calls and messages. Open contacts, open the contact you want and press call/message button. Android will ask which app to use. Select Whatsapp (or whatever you want).

Is that even possible? Since at least android 13 you need to set the default dialer app, otherwise that app can't make/receive calls.

IDK, I'm still on Android 5.1. I thought permissions were separate from default app setting.

privacy is “in the DNA” of WhatsApp so you cannot delete a message there.

Same privacy as Facebook offers.

Telegram is much better than any other popular messenger. Pity it is owned by Russians.

Telegram doesn't use end-to-end encryption by default, so it would be a bad alternative to WhatsApp even if it was owned by Mother Teresa. At least if you care about privacy.

> Pity it is owned by Russians.

why is that?

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