Privacy fears spark WhatsApp exodus

But are millions of users rushing to rivals with even weaker privacy protection?

Millions of users have fled Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp due to a perfect storm of privacy concerns. However, there are fears that people are joining rivals that have poorer privacy features. The messaging upheaval was sparked by two issues at WhatsApp – Apple highlighting the amount of data the app collects, combined with a change in WhatsApp terms that many people wrongly construed as plans to share the content of messages with Facebook. WhatsApp built its reputation on end-to-end encryption (E2EE), which meant only the recipient and sender could access the content of messages. Although WhatsApp won’t be sharing message content with Facebook, it was still a PR disaster for the company, with rival messaging services suddenly shooting up the App Store charts as WhatsApp users sought alternatives. “This is a privacy movement,”…

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PC Pro (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2021

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