What’s wrong with WhatsApp ?

At the time of writing this post , the users of WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal are over 2 billion,over 500 million  and 10-20 million respectively.

There are lots of analysis, tabulations and recommendations comparing the three.

There are many factors that users are aware of only now, after using the app for around 5 years.

There is talk of terms like encryption, open source, sharing of data etc etc. All concerns stem from the privacy policy which has been revised by WhatsApp.

The moot point is , how does it apply to you and me as users.

Let’s take them one by one.

The first factor seems to be End to end encryption.

WhatsApp introduced end to end encryption  only in 2016 . Users , barring the terrorists, were perfectly ok with it earlier also. Telegram had these feature since  its launch in 2013 , but one had to initiate a secret chat for encryption. The idea was that an average user does not need to encrypt every post of his. After all when you forward a good morning message with lots of pretty flowers in the background, are you really worried about the post being leaked ???

Corporate organizations don’t send quotations for tenders on WhatsApp nor does army send it’s operational plans. For an individual user , in my mind, end to end encryption is quite redundant.

The next factor is Open source.

Since when did open source matter to an user ??

It is said that an open source app can be reviewed by peers for security issues. Windows OS and Microsoft office are propriety software while Linux and Liber office are open source alternatives. Apart from my immediate family members , I hardly come across anyone using these Opensource software. If one is comfortable with M$ and Satyen Nadella why not with WA and Mark Zuckerberg?

I’ll leave it that.

The third factor is what the governments recommend .

Any app that is banned by any government is only an indication of how secure that app is and how that government is intimidated by the ‘subversive content’ going on through that app . The government with all its resources finds itself  quite helpless in dealing with the situation. Telegram tops the list with ban from Iran, Russia  and China. Latest country to join the bandwagon of gagging ‘subversion’ is the great champion of Freedom of Expression, the US.  Whatsapp is banned in China. WeChat is a wonderful app but closely monitored by the Big Brother.

Parler was taken off the net by Amazon because it failed to moderate the contents. in other words Amazon moderates as to who is moderating rightly and who is moderating wrongly. 

Extending that logic, this post may be taken off by the host  Bigrock  if I fail to moderate any comment that bigrock finds offending.

Hail Tech tyranny!  

The main issue really is data security ,data meaning personal data not the forwarded messages.

Fourth factor would be the privacy issue or the data security.

While E2E deals with leakage of information the company owning the app itself has access to some details stored in the server with the permission of the user “through a thumb impression on the screen of his mobile phone”. God knows how many “I agree”s I must have pressed. Now Whatsapp is asking for one more “I agree” to have access and share some personal details of user.

What could these personal details be ? The main inputs would be contact number, email id, interests  and geo-location. As an user, none of these should worry me. It should not worry anyone as long as one is not a political leader, or a business tycoon, frequently flying to undisclosed locations , staying incognito and meeting people surreptitiously.

A common man may end up getting a few more calls from commercial establishments selling their products based on your interests. This in any case is happening even now.

Finally we come to user friendliness

Whatsapp is considered very user friendly mainly because of the ease of forwarding and the video calls. Whatsapp has rich contents due to the phenomenal number of groups and the appetite for people to keep pressing the curved arrow till every post reaches every group,sometimes more than once.

• Here I would like to mention that a group in whatsapp is limitted to 256 while telgram can go up to 2,00,000.
• Anyone sending original attachments would have noticed that whatsapp limits the size of attachment to 16MB while on telegram it is a whopping 1.5 GB.

Why a techie would prefer Telegram to others

• Telegram stores all contents on the cloud thus leaving your phone as light as ever.
• Since the contents are stored on the cloud the app can be used from any number of devices at a time though you don’t need to store these in any of the devices.
• ability to send huge attachments. I use this feature for transferring stuff from mobile phone to laptop.
• The world of bots lets you create stickers, surveys, polls etc.
• there are settings for self destruction of chats and the account itself.
• As on date Whtsapp web server is functional only if the app is running on your phone and Signal does not have a web access.

Summing up

• To a normal user, Whatsapp is still the best bet for the kind of contents one is used to and ease of use.
• Governments would prefer Signal for its employees as there is less chance of any inadvertent leak of sensitive information . It is already the chosen app for European commission .
• Someone who accesses the messages from a number of devices and is comfortable using the features like secret chat, self destruction ,bots etc would love telegram.

The topic is too current and I am aware that I might have, inadvertently gone wrong or misunderstood some issue. Any feedback would be welcome.

Cheers !