WhatsApp is infuriating. I've managed to get the people I chat with to move to Signal or Telegram (seems a bit more friendly). But there's tons of resistance. My 9-yr-old doesn't seem to care about the privacy implications of sending all your writing (and photos) to Facebook, forever. My 7-yr-old does care, and expressed surprise that it was even legal to "take their secrets" and "I'd call the police on Facebook." (Her words.)
But I suppose if other parents don't join in (shit most of them use WhatsApp themselves), what hope do their kids have? And I don't want to get my daughter ostracized so being heavy handed seems like a long-term losing strategy.
Doesn't help that this is in a 3rd world Central American country and that vile, anti-net-neutrality zero-rating is in effect for FB stuff. You can basically pick up any phone, and WhatsApp will work, even if nothing else[1] does. Apart from the cost of the phone, there's no cost, at all, as far as I can see.
1: Including emergency, as this country hasn't really gotten to that point yet.
I was under the impression that WhatsApp is a relatively secure messaging platform [1].
I travel, from time to time, to countries such as the UAE, Singapore and France. I once attempted to get people to use Signal. No luck. HN seemed to have arrived at a consensus that Telegram is a crock of shit. So I shifted - in part due to local adoption - to WhatsApp. When their in-app calling was blocked in each of the above countries, I gained a little faith in their security model.
> In interviews with journalists WhatsApp stated that they would use Public Key Encryption, where only the sender and recipient can unencrypted content. Indeed they did, but they used the same key for every user.
But I suppose if other parents don't join in (shit most of them use WhatsApp themselves), what hope do their kids have? And I don't want to get my daughter ostracized so being heavy handed seems like a long-term losing strategy.
Doesn't help that this is in a 3rd world Central American country and that vile, anti-net-neutrality zero-rating is in effect for FB stuff. You can basically pick up any phone, and WhatsApp will work, even if nothing else[1] does. Apart from the cost of the phone, there's no cost, at all, as far as I can see.
1: Including emergency, as this country hasn't really gotten to that point yet.