With more than 1 billion users in 180 countries, WhatsApp is the world's favourite messaging app.
Facebook acquisition of WhatsApp in 2014 left privacy experts and security-conscious users concerned. After all Facebook and its third party apps were involved in multiple security breaches, resulting in thousands of user’s private information being leaked. However WhatsApp have always insisted that they are a separate app dedicated to creating and maintaining a secure messaging service.
After 6 years the day has finally come with WhatsApp updating its privacy policy the writing is loud and clear, the Facebook-owned platform is now arm-twisting the uses to either accept the policies or get ready to lose access to the application going forward.
Now had this been any other application accepting most policies would not have been a concern at all, however, it is important to understand Facebook intentions behind the update.
According to the new privacy policy WhatsApp seeks your consent to not only collect and share your data like “your phone number, transaction data service related information, information on how you interact with others (including business) when using our services, mobile device information, your IP address and may include other information identified in the privacy policy section entitled ‘Information we collect’ obtained upon notice or based on your consent.”
In simple words it means that from now on WhatsApp will track which group are you most active in, your broadcast list, kind of messages you forward, the number of WhatsApp calls to you made and to whom, your spending habits (remember you also have WhatsApp pay now), the places you visit often, your status messages etc. and share them with Facebook and Instagram.
Eventually this will result in Facebook knowing every bit of your action and serving relevant ads on each platform accordingly.
Your business catalogue is also not safe if you use WhatsApp business and Facebook may save the insights to your competitors based on the traction that your products get.
And in case you want to delete your WhatsApp account this new policy has you covered there as well it reads when your delete your account it does not affect your information related to the groups you created or the information other users have relating to such as their copy of the messages you sent them. So now ‘You will have to dig deeper to wipe off your data from WhatsApp if you want to delete your account’ says WhatsApp.
Now that you are worried about this new privacy policy update from WhatsApp and have understood how dangerous it is, let's look at some alternative and here we are giving you the top 4 most popular alternatives to WhatsApp which you can use based on your needs.
Signal- Signal is also a free simple to use app which is available on all major platforms. But unlike WhatsApp and Telegram, Signal uses open source encryption, which means security developers can test it for flaws and find bugs. It lacks the glam of WhatsApp and Telegram but makes of for it in terms of the security that it provides. Of all major messaging Apps signal is the arguably the most secured. Elon Musk recently had urged his followers to use the messaging of couple of days ago this also resulted in many buying stocks of another company signal advance which saw its shares shoot up 12-folds in two days!
Telegram- Arguably the best like-like app to WhatsApp out there, Telegram has been growing popular in the last few months. It is a freeware cross-platform cloud based instant messaging, video calling, and VoIP software. It was launched in 2013 by two Russian brothers Nikolai Durov and Pavel Durov. The most popular feature of Telegram is it secret chat mode which is made possible by the services end to end encryption under telegrams MT proto messaging protocol which hackers worldwide have failed to crack.
Skype- Probably the oldest of messaging apps in the list Skype is still used as one of the primary modes of business communication by various companies. Available free for almost all popular operating systems Skype offers to message chat and video call like no other applications.
Though some users might find a lack of fancy features like disappearing messages etc. a hindrance, however, the group video calls, clear audio calls, and ability to get your International number are a few and best features of this application.
Like most other applications you can see Skype to share large files as well and thanks to Microsoft it has deeper integration with Microsoft email service.
Viber- A popular messaging platform, Viber also offers end to end encryption of calls media and files exchange using the platform. It is one of the very few chat application that offer multi device support, a feature that even WhatsApp is slated to come up with.
Using the Viber app you can make audio and video calls to your contacts free of charge and similar to Skype it offers international calls at affordable rates.
With other features include public accounts, voice and video messages, sticker store, and Viber games etc. Viber offers near WhatsApp like experience and can help you easily switch from the Facebook-owned messaging app.
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