Privacy

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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.

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Today, I finally deleted WhatsApp (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 day ago by AcornTickler@sh.itjust.works to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

46 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It has been a long journey.

I have been gradually convincing my family, close relatives and friends to make the switch to Signal for over two years. I am already the "tech support guy" in all my circles so most didn't really question it. Most of my friends are quite tech-savvy, and some even did use Signal before I talked to them about it.

This also filtered out some "friends" who were never that close to me to begin with. So, that's a bonus, I guess.

Overall, my recommendation to others interested would be to tell people how much you don't like Meta's business model instead of the privacy aspect. I already ditched Facebook and Instagram many years ago, and this helped defend my point a bit better.

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[–] Zak@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How much of the data Meta can siphon is an open question as I understand it. WhatsApp definitely uses encryption, but there are a bunch of ways the client could send them the cleartext, especially if one allows their chatbot into a conversation.

It's hard to say which is worse. I have a fair number of contacts on Signal now, and I find that's a good balance of easy and trustworthy.

[–] technomage@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

My distrust of Meta wants to say they somehow siphon everything, but you're probably right. We don't know for sure, and speculating is probably just crazy-making at the end of the day.

I'm seriously just considering setting up a self hosted Matrix instance and piping all my chat apps through that. Get the more tech literate friends on something more secure, and then be done with the rest lol I'm basically already the unofficial (and untrained) sysadmin for my property lol