People begin to shun WhatsApp over privacy concerns

WhatsApp, earlier in the week, released new terms of service to its messenger subscribers. It said some of the user-data will be stored or tracked by the parent company Facebook and the subsidiaries to offer personalized service.

. It is slated to go into effect from February 8 and if the consumers are not comfortable with WhatsApp's new user-data policy, have no choice but to agree to the terms to continue the service or uninstall the app.

. WhatsApp has specified that the individual and group chat conversations between the user and friends & family will be end-to-end encrypted and the data will be never accessed for marketing ads or any other purposes on its messenger app.

. But, the chat conversation between enterprise/business owners and customers on WhatsApp can be used by Facebook and its entities. There are a lot more transparency issues and the company hasn't addressed them to the public.

. Recently, Apple introduced Privacy labels on the App Store. This measure made WhatsApp and others reveal what and how much user-information they collect and track at all times.

. Facebook and its companies collect user phone numbers, other people’s phone numbers stored in the contact list, profile names, profile pictures, status messages (including when a user was last online), financial details, diagnostic data collected from app logs, and more on WhatsApp.

. Add to that, the audacity of the company's ultimatum to billions of users triggered stronger criticism from all quarters. Security experts and consumers panned WhatsApp for being tone-deaf in protecting user privacy.

. The world's richest man and founder of Tesla & SpaceX, Elon Musk with a single word tweet asked fans to switch to Signal, a fully end-to-end encrypted instant messenger app.

. And, in another message, Musk took a dig at Facebook and indirectly blamed it for aiding fanatic Republicans to mobilise the crowd for carrying out a siege on the United States Capitol Hill Building in Washington.

. Already, Signal has dethroned WhatsApp as the top free app on Apple App Store in India. Also, another rival Telegram is also steadily gaining acceptance among users.

. If we look at the privacy label on both Telegram and Signal Messenger and compare them with WhatsApp Messenger, we will get a clearer picture of how much user-data is linked, stored, and tracked.

. For now, based on trends on social media platforms, Signal seems to be the go-to choice among users to take privacy very important aspect for private communication. It requires only the phone number for registration and that's it. No other information will be used or tracked at any time. However, one disadvantage is that Signal Messenger doesn't offer cloud backup. This means if the user loses a phone or accidentally factory reset the phone, they will lose all the chats and contacts. They won't be able to sync any old data back to the new phone and have to start all over again.

. Due to the overwhelming response from users, Signal is facing a server outage for registration.

. "Verification codes are currently delayed across several providers because so many new people are trying to join Signal right now (we can barely register our excitement). We are working with carriers to resolve this as quickly as possible. Hang in there," Signal said on Twitter.

. Another rival Telegram shares couple of traits with WhatsApp. The former doesn't offer end-to-end encryption by default and but on the bright side, it has a special secret chat feature that nobody even Telegram can't access or store. It can be viewed only by the sender and the receiver. If the timer is set for the message, it will self-destruct after the expiry of the set time.

. Here's how to start Secret chats on Telegram: Open the profile of the user you want to contact >> Tap on 'More …’ >>> then ‘Start Secret Chat’. It also offers a timer ranging from seconds (1-30) to one minute, one hour, one day, or up to a maximum of one week.

. It should be noted that Telegram secret chats are device-specific. If you start a secret chat with a friend on one of your devices, this chat will only be available on that device. If you log out, you will lose all your secret chats.

. Like WhatsApp, Telegram also offers a cloud storage option, but it has a risk of getting decrypted if any person gets hold of the user's account ID (either Google Drive/ iCloud) and password. Also, Telegram servers do have access to the encryption key.

. If used with the Secret chats feature, Telegram is still better of the two WhatsApp alternatives. Also, users can share multimedia content up to 2GB and also create a bigger chat group.

. Telegram founder and CEO, Pavel Durov has issued a media statement panning Facebook for not respecting user privacy. And also said the Mark Zuckerberg-owned company has set up a dedicated team to see why Telegram is gaining popularity.

. " I hear Facebook has an entire department devoted to figuring out why Telegram is so popular. Imagine dozens of employees working on just that full-time. I am happy to save Facebook tens of millions of dollars and give away our secret for free: respect your users.

Millions of people are outraged by the latest change in WhatsApp Terms, which now say users must feed all their private data to Facebook’s ad engine. It’s no surprise that the flight of users from WhatsApp to Telegram, already ongoing for a few years, has accelerated.

At about 500 million users and growing, Telegram has become a major problem for the Facebook corporation. Unable to compete with Telegram in quality and privacy, Facebook’s WhatsApp seems to have switched to covert marketing: Wikipedia editors have recently exposed multiple paid bots adding biased information into the WhatsApp Wikipedia article "-- Pavel Durov, founder & CEO, Telegram Messenger

. However, these are early days, as WhatsApp commands a bigger user-base close to 2 billion and most of the users are still unaware of the new terms and user privacy policy. But, it won't be long before they realise how much is at stake and make an informed decision about whether to continue to use Facebook products or not.

. As of now, Signal is said to have more than 15 million downloads and the Telegram has a 500 million-plus user-base worldwide on both Android and iOS platforms.

. Get the latest news on new launches, gadget reviews, apps, cybersecurity, and more on personal technology only on DH Tech .

People begin to shun WhatsApp over privacy concerns

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