Is it perhaps time to switch from Whatsapp? Lets face it … Whatsapp is a dumpster fire when it comes to privacy, security and good business sense. At LSL we’ve been carefully steering our clients away from Whatsapp for over five years, and we now enact our comms policy to stipulate Signal or Skype.

Facebook is forcing all WhatsApp users to either allow them to take all your data (and the data on all your friends) – including to be reused for whatever purpose they see fit amongst the multitude of subsidiaries – or delete your account and leave.

Buried beneath all the terrible news about the US in the papers in the last week, was a little gem of a piece. Not only has Elon being relaunching the same rocket fifty times, but he’s been public about his embittered distrust of Facebooks mobile messaging platform.

We honestly couldn’t be happier that a prominent celebrity has finally made a public statement, and that people are listening!

To switch from WhatsApp is an enlightening and releiving experience, and switching to a less onerous product is almost entirely pain free. Signal, Skype, Wire and Telegram all have mostly equivecal features although Telegram has had some security issues in the past.

The reason Signal is so prominent in this list is that it is a platform from an organisation whose primary focus is not money. There’s no ads or trackers and even if servers were compromised, your messages and calls are safe. It’s open source and we recommend taking a look at the Signal website for more information.

Whether you choose to ditch WhatsApp for Signal or another non-Facebook platform perhaps you may want to consider that the data you share with the platform (that the platform then “owns” insofar as data can legally be owned) may include:

• Information about your device(s)
  • Make
  • Model
  • Apps / Software installed
  • Times of regular use
  • Where you use it
• Information about how you connect
  • What WiFi networks you use
  • What WiFi networks you are within connection distance of
  • Which mobile provider you use
  • Where you go (with your device) and where you meet your friends
• Information about your friends & contacts
  • Who they connect with
  • When you speak to them most often
  • How long you speak to them for
  • If you upload pictures with geolocation data, and tag your friends… where you all hang out and have spent memorable time with

Are you sure you want to have commercial conversations whilst sharing that level of meta-data, and potentially exposing your latest ideas to the swathes of companies now “subsidiaries” of Facebook?

We don’t. Please feel free to get in touch and talk it through with us.