Even though WhatsApp protects the content of messages using end-to-end encryption, a lot of user information can be collected and passed on.
As our cooperation partner checked4you reports, the criticism of too little data protection on WhatsApp remains.
“Legal use of WhatsApp is virtually impossible.”
This sentence from the Austrian IT professor Peter Burgstaller caused discussions online at the beginning of 2016. His criticism: Too little data protection. Nevertheless, more than a billion people worldwide now use Messenger.
We also criticize WhatsApp's privacy policy. Okay, in April 2016, the makers of WhatsApp introduced end-to-end encryption . This means: The contents of all messages can only be seen by the sender and recipient. No secret service, no criminals and not even WhatsApp can see the texts, photos, videos, etc. The prerequisite is that all participants in the conversation use the current WhatsApp version. A step in the right direction.
And yet there remains criticism, which lies in the nature of the messenger itself: It searches through the phone numbers stored in the cell phone and is allowed to send them to the WhatsApp servers in the USA and other countries around the world. There it is checked which numbers are already known (i.e. who from your contacts also uses WhatsApp). The problem now is that it can be used to create user profiles.
And even if no one gets access to the content of your messages, they can still see when you communicated and with whom, how often. WhatsApp even wants to share this information with all other companies in the Facebook group . WhatsApp has been part of this since 2014. The company is prohibited from passing on the data of German users until further notice - by an order from the Hamburg data protection officer .
What is there instead of WhatsApp?
The alternative are messengers that only use European servers with stricter data protection laws or messengers that do not rely on telephone numbers. For example, you can communicate on Threema or Hoccer using your username or user ID alone, without having to reveal your friends' contact details.
You actually have to get permission from each individual to send your contacts' data to a server that can be located in the USA. This is what German data protection law wants. But because practically no one does that, Professor Burgstaller comes to his provocative sentence.
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