this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2023
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Because that's how phones work, it links your account to your phone number and uses your contacts to tell you who's on the app too using their numbers.
Yeah, that is also how computer viruses work. I was very thankful for permission control. That app is cancer.
Meh, I think some people are just paranoid on Lemmy when it comes to stuff like this. There's plenty of laws in the UK around storage and use of information that protect users of apps like this.
If it's so benign, why make it necessary to give all the information about all your contacts to the app?
To paraphrase Zuckerberg, "people are dumbfucks for giving me so much information."
How else do you think a messaging app that replaces your phones messaging functionality is supposed to work if not on phone numbers?
So you're saying that the only way a messaging app can work is to access all the information from all your contacts? If it doesn't have all that information, it can't work? If Whatsapp can't have all that information, it would be impossible to function?
No, it's fully possible to have its own account and log in system, but that adds a layer of abstraction that makes it harder to sell to people as a replacement for their inbuilt messaging apps which just require a phone number.
If you give Facebook any benefit of the doubt in relation to privacy concerns, I guess I can only believe Zuckerberg to be correct.
And all thieves pay close attention to laws, and make sure their apps have "nothing" hidden in the folds.