The messaging app WhatsApp announced a change to its privacy policy last week. Thanks newly formulated rules can a company belonging to the Facebook concern share user data with other social networks belonging to the umbrella of the blue social network. In response, WhatsApp's popularity plummets. The charts of the most downloaded applications are now announcing the arrival of a new king of communication services. The Signal app comes out on top.
Jak androidBoth Google Play and Apple's App Store show Signal at the top of the list of most downloaded applications. Signal is a communication platform that uses message encryption at both ends, i.e. both at the sender and at the receiver. Additionally, the service's encryption software is completely open source. Its revisions are thus taken care of by the general public of experts. Unlike other similar platforms, Signal does not collect sensitive metadata about its users. The increase in its popularity is thus a clear response to the change in the privacy policies of the rival WhatsApp.
Fortunately, WhatsApp still won't be able to afford the same things as, for example, in the US. The change in the rules, which allows the application to collect and share data about your location, phone number or signal strength, does not apply to the countries of the European Union. In them, the GDPR privacy regulation (General Data Protection Regulation) applies. How do you see the change? Do you use WhatsApp, or do you still not trust its many-times suspected owners?
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May they burn in hell. 😀
I have been using signal as my default sms application for a long time. I will stop using WhatsApp just out of principle. I will not support such a change, even if it does not concern the EU at the moment.
Regulations are one thing, but what happens in the background and is not revealed is another matter. Something pops up on FB here and there, Google finds something here and there, e.g. publicly available contacts. WA no more, I doubt that there will be two versions of the application for the West and the EU, it will be resolved by a road declaration from user data collected from the EU.