Hi everyone, Daniel here from TwinBytes with another quick tutorial for you.
This time on is WhatsApp safe to use? There's been a lot of information floating around the internet now and a lot of
people making YouTube videos about this, and part of the problem is people will take a video
what someone else said and just reiterate the same thing without doing any kind of fact checking.
So I'm going to explain some of this and let you know my personal opinions as well as looking at some of
the facts and I'm going to share bits and pieces of some clips here for you as well and comment on those.
The first thing I want to do is talk about some common sense. So when looking at these
privacy issues as I mentioned, Google and Facebook, this stuff happens all the time anyway. So as
soon as you hear something hit the news, it's already too late, it's already been happening, and
it's only that they just admitted to doing this. It doesn't mean they weren't doing it all along.
So how do you know that it's only just begun now. With all this information, are you going
to stop using Google and Facebook because of all the privacy issues?
or maybe just stop using the internet completely because everything is being watched
or you're enjoying the other home services where you have Hey Alexa or Hey Google. They got to be
listening to you all the time in order to know when you call out to them to do something for you.
There's a lot of privacy information that you can read about here. I've got the links down below
in the description. I'll post it right up here as well you can see that you can look at the privacy
information. It's got key updates, their terms of service, and the privacy policy and if you look
at the privacy policy carefully and look at what information they collect. It does actually say that
they're collecting information on your messages and your messages are stored on their server
temporarily they say in the event of maybe there's a delay sending it. So the information of course
has to go through there but they're claiming that they don't collect all your information.
So let's look at a couple of these clips.
WhatsApp has come under fire a little bit in the last few days because of some policy changes that are happening.
Facebook owns WhatsApp and in the coming days they're going to be changing the privacy policy
They're going to force you to opt in to their data sharing program. So that WhatsApp can share personal data between WhatsApp and
other Facebook subsidiaries. This becomes a problem because Facebook is really good at tracking people;
and while this doesn't change the underlying technologies behind WhatsApp, meaning Facebook
still can't read your text chats or listen in on your calls, even though we think they might
be able to, because let's face it. Facebook is just that good at tracking you. It does bring
up some major points however. Because WhatsApp fundamentally has been about privacy from day one.
So thanks to the Genius Lounge for this video clip and what they're saying is a little bit
contradictory as well because the one part is that WhatsApp cannot get your chats and voice chats but
at the same time saying that Facebook is just that good at gathering your information. So how do we
know just because they're not saying they're doing it. Maybe they are monitoring this stuff anyway
secretly behind the scenes.
Now the good news here is I have an alternative for you.
Signal. WhatsApp is actually based off of the signal protocol, meaning they took what was open source and they built on it and they monetized it.
Because Facebook's really good at that. Signal is an open source peer-reviewed 501c3 nonprofit organization.
That provides free text, voice, and video chats to people out there on the internet. Just because they want to make sure that you can speak freely.
So thanks to the Genius Lounge for that bit of information. You might want to check out signal and
also I would say check out telegram and see what you like between the two of them there.
What works well for you and I"d love to hear your feedback on that. But let's have a look at another clip
This time from Seytonic.
WhatsApp was founded in 2009 and eventually acquired by Facebook in 2014 in efforts to help expand Facebook's user base outside of America
when this acquisition went down. Understandably there was a lot of talk about what this meant for privacy.
Will Facebook be able to read my messages? Are they going to start tracking users in their efforts to push Facebook ads
further down our throats?
At the time WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum wrote a blog post titled "Setting the record straight"
defending his choice to sell his company to Facebook in which he basically explains
how he grew up during the time of the USSR and free unfiltered communication.
Free from worry about the KGB listening to your phone calls just wasn't a thing back then.
He details this is why WhatsApp just values privacy, oh so much, and says if partnering with Facebook meant we had to change our values we just wouldn't have done it.
That sounded all well and good in 2014, though this romance between Facebook and WhatsApp really didn't last too long.
As just 18 months after the acquisition, WhatsApp started sharing some of users personal information with Facebook
So that's actually pretty funny, and I love the sarcasm in his voice as well at that one point.
You gotta think when people know that Facebook is one of the biggest spies in the world out
there as far as social media goes, and that Facebook acquired WhatsApp in 2014. That's now...
seven years ago. Why was this not a concern back then? Why wait until now and then be
concerned just because they're admitting to what they are tracking for you. Why do you think
Facebook acquired this in the first place? You have to ask yourself that question.
Now this obviously didn't look very good. As Facebook kind of promised that they wouldn't do anything like this prior to
buying WhatsApp. But then they just went and did it anyway and so Facebook was actually fined over 100
million euros for these misleading claims. That's some hefty coin.
Shortly after this in 2018 the WhatsApp CEO left.
But why did he leave?
So of course as I said, they went and did it anyway.
Then they got sued and then the CEO leaves the company! There's of course a lot of questions here.
The WhatsApp co-founder a guy called the Brian Acton also left and subsequently endorsed
a hashtag delete Facebook campaign. Pretty weird given he had just taken part in selling
the company he co-founded to Facebook. Though he did donate 50 million dollars to Signal. A rival messaging app.
So thanks to Seytonic for that little bit of a clip. So are you surprised now the CEO and
the co-founder leave and then the co-founder donates that much money to a rival app.
You can't help but start asking questions and wondering what's going on behind the scenes here.
So I am not one to be part of the tinfoil hat community, but I am on the fence and watching
things from the sidelines to see how things all play out. Because if anybody wants to get
your information bad enough, they are going to get it and I know from studying about
as an ethical hacker that it's... any anything is hackable, anything can be
accessed and it's just a matter of do they, how badly do they want to get that information.
So in my personal opinion I don't think it's a huge deal to stop using WhatsApp
just because there was some news about them sharing information with Facebook now.
If you're using Facebook anyway, you're already sharing a lot of information there, and if you're
using Google and you have that on your phone, you ever notice when you're going to certain places
and they send you a message saying, how was this place you were just at? Write a review about it.
How did they know you were just there? So there's all this stuff that's happening all the time anyway.
So unless you're not using Facebook, you're not using Google, and you're doing everything else
you can to minimize as much privacy as possible, then yeah you maybe want to stop using WhatsApp
because of their association with Facebook, knowing that they're gathering information somehow.
and that should have been back in 2014. It doesn't matter now just because they admitted
certain things. As soon as Facebook took over in 2014, that's when you should have jumped the ship.
So anyway it's a good idea to always do everything you can to stay as safe and secure online and try
and protect your privacy and security as best you can. But don't go overboard. Don't be stupid.
Just because of some things that you hear on the news or a YouTube video. Just use some common sense.
Look into things, get the facts for yourself.
That's it for this quick tech-torial. I hope you guys did find it helpful.
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Anyway thanks so much for watching.
If you've been sticking around this long, please comment below, let me know and maybe give you a shout out in my next video.
Alright thanks so much for watching. See you in the next one. Bye for now.