"WhatsApp doesn't collect your data!"
(because everything else they own does)
this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
286 points (99.7% liked)
Privacy
41141 readers
663 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
Who you contact, when, how, from where is bing collected
WhatsApp doesn’t collect your data, because it’s an app. Zuckerberg does it
So the whole security and privacy claims are purely marketing.
Yes, but so are the ads!
What? The communications app owned by Facebook is using data from other Facebook owned platforms to target ads? Who could have ever seen this coming!
It’s unfortunately hard to convert people from WhatsApp to other software, because contacts might care to move but the group will not…
I've had 2 or more messenging apps for about a decade now because of this.
I wonder from where they get the data if I don’t have Facebook or Instagram. WhatsApp is a shitty app that I begrudgingly use because of the parents groups and some relatives that I didn’t manage to make switch to signal.
Facebook absolutely builds ghost profiles for people who don't have a Facebook profile. You see all of those "Like" buttons on non-Facebook websites? Those are cookies that are essentially tracking you. They may not have your first/last name or other personal data as a regular profile, but they can build a pretty damn good composite of you. Source - I work in the ad industry
Yeah I thought it would be something like that… feels shady af
WhatsApp links you to a social circle and Meta has all of the information of said social circle.
I don't need to know you like soccer if I know 10 people who have a soccer team and you're on all of their contact lists.
Time to switch to a different client.
Check out Signal; it works very well.
And people will still use it.
We lemmings are cool enough to do that. The struggle is convincing everyone else🥲
Saddest truth
The next time you wonder, "wow. How can they provide this amazing service for free?" always remember: YOU are the product.
Amazing? Whatscrap? I think there are way better services out there for free as this Zuckerbot trash.
That’s inane and misleading. FOSS is free and amazing. You are not the product.
Mosern cars are filthy. They cost a shitload a money and you’re the product anyway.
“If it’s a service provided by a company whose business model involves selling personalised apps, you are probably the product
What happened to them not being allowed to bridge data? Or is this not the case in EU?
Haaaa noyb… never a dull moment with them.
Is there, by any chance, an alternative client?
There's the Whatsapp web client on F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.kuenzler.whatsappwebtogo/
But it still requires the official mobile app for the initial login. When I used it, logging in once seemed to be good for a few months, as long you open it from time to time. There's also a Whatsapp clone that seems to support login, but I haven't tried it and it hasn't seen updates in a couple years: https://github.com/KhubaibKhan4/Whatsify-Android
Thanks. It seems to be just whatsapp web in an app form, so I could probaby just go to my browser. But that's still an interesting idea that never ocurred to me on phone.
Signal, Telegram, SimpleX.
Spin the wheel ladies and gentlemen!
Tbh. This took waaay longer than i expected. They bought it con 2014. I didn't even know a company was capable of holding its enshitification tendencies that long
Normies got nothing to hide and they dont mind ads.
So, stop saying privacy. Say control, scam and abuse.
Normies got nothing to say and have no mind.
you can still hide your messages with gpg the green in the logo may be glowing brighter then ever and if you cant move from it atleast use gpg