{"id":37361,"date":"2022-10-17T16:21:47","date_gmt":"2022-10-17T20:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=37361"},"modified":"2022-10-18T15:02:53","modified_gmt":"2022-10-18T19:02:53","slug":"whatsapp-more-private-than-imessage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/10\/17\/whatsapp-more-private-than-imessage\/","title":{"rendered":"WhatsApp More Private Than iMessage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2022\/10\/17\/mark-zuckergerb-whatsapp-over-imessage\/\">Sami Fathi<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.macrumors.com\/2022\/10\/17\/mark-zuckergerb-whatsapp-over-imessage\/\">\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/Cj0Tyr6Lh1u\/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D\">a post<\/a> sharing a Meta billboard in New York City promoting WhatsApp over SMS or iMessage, Zuckerberg said WhatsApp is far better for privacy-concerned users thanks to its end-to-end encryption, ability to set messages to disappear after a set period of time, and its availability across multiple platforms.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>He&rsquo;s not wrong, as iMessage downgrades to SMS if there are any Android users in the conversation, and WhatsApp&rsquo;s backups are encrypted so that Apple can&rsquo;t read them. WhatsApp also gives you more access to your own data, with the ability to export conversations. Unfortunately, the people I text with use iMessage.<\/p>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/10\/time-for-apple-to-fix-texting\/\">Time for Apple to Fix Texting<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/12\/whatsapp-privacy-policy-and-encryption-canary\/\">WhatsApp Privacy Policy and Encryption Canary<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/07\/facebook-whatsapp-turmoil-takeaway\/\">Facebook-WhatsApp Turmoil Takeaway<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/05\/10\/whatsapp-extends-encryption-to-icloud-backups\/\">WhatsApp Extends Encryption to iCloud Backups<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"whatsapp-more-private-than-imessage-update-2022-10-18\">Update (2022-10-18): <a href=\"https:\/\/www.techradar.com\/news\/whatsapps-new-privacy-policy-requires-you-to-share-data-with-facebook\">Balakumar K and James Peckham<\/a> (in 2021, via <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/simX\/status\/1582130530023153664\">Simone Manganelli<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.techradar.com\/news\/whatsapps-new-privacy-policy-requires-you-to-share-data-with-facebook\"><p>&ldquo;The information we share with the other Facebook Companies includes your account registration information (such as your phone number), transaction data, service-related information, information on how you interact with others (including businesses) when using our Services, mobile device information, your IP address, and may include other information identified in the Privacy Policy section entitled &lsquo;Information We Collect&rsquo; or obtained upon notice to you or based on your consent,&rdquo; it adds.<\/p><p>[&#8230;]<\/p><p>If you don&rsquo;t want to allow Facebook to do this, your only alternative is to switch to another messaging service such as Telegram or Signal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.whatsapp.com\/legal\/updates\/privacy-policy\/\">WhatsApp<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/www.whatsapp.com\/legal\/updates\/privacy-policy\/\">\n<p>We collect information about your activity on our Services, like service-related, diagnostic, and performance information. This includes information about your activity (including how you use our Services, your Services settings, how you interact with others using our Services (including when you interact with a business), and the time, frequency, and duration of your activities and interactions), log files, and diagnostic, crash, website, and performance logs and reports.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>iMessage <a href=\"https:\/\/news.softpedia.com\/news\/apple-shares-some-imessages-metadata-with-law-enforcement-508752.shtml\">also<\/a> collects <a href=\"https:\/\/appleinsider.com\/articles\/16\/09\/29\/apple-acknowledges-tracking-imessage-metadata-and-sharing-it-with-law-enforcement\">some metadata<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p>The actual WhatsApp message data is not shared with Meta. However, it <em>is<\/em> stored in <a href=\"https:\/\/faq.whatsapp.com\/1192377921246090\">iCloud backups<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/faq.whatsapp.com\/1192377921246090\/\"><p>If you have iCloud Backups turned on for your entire iPhone, an unencrypted version of your chat history is also backed up to iCloud. To ensure your WhatsApp chats and media are only backed up with end-to-end encryption, <a href=\"https:\/\/faq.whatsapp.com\/3095755113995453\/?helpref=faq_content\">turn iCloud Backup off<\/a> on your device.<\/p><p>For information on how we collect and process your data, including your end-to-end encrypted backup, please see the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.whatsapp.com\/legal\/updates\/privacy-policy\/\"> WhatsApp Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/matthew_d_green\/status\/1582145936192868352\">Matthew Green<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/matthew_d_green\/status\/1582150525524795393\">\n<p>Hmm, took a look at the <a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/documentation\/foundation\/optimizing_your_app_s_data_for_icloud_backup\">Apple developer docs<\/a> and I see why Apple may have made this harder than it should be. Doesn&rsquo;t excuse WhatsApp for failing to engineer a solution.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/documentation\/foundation\/optimizing_your_app_s_data_for_icloud_backup\">Apple<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/developer.apple.com\/documentation\/foundation\/optimizing_your_app_s_data_for_icloud_backup\">\n<p>The <code>isExcludedFromBackup<\/code> resource value exists only to provide guidance to the system about which files and directories it can exclude; it&rsquo;s not a mechanism to guarantee those items never appear in a backup or on a restored device.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>However, it seems like they could get around this problem by encrypting the database or by storing it in a folder such as <code>Caches<\/code> that is excluded from backup.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sami Fathi: In a post sharing a Meta billboard in New York City promoting WhatsApp over SMS or iMessage, Zuckerberg said WhatsApp is far better for privacy-concerned users thanks to its end-to-end encryption, ability to set messages to disappear after a set period of time, and its availability across multiple platforms. He&rsquo;s not wrong, as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2022-10-17T20:21:49Z","apple_news_api_id":"026e3e98-c1a1-4666-9746-350d71bdd3aa","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2022-10-18T19:02:58Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAw==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AAm4-mMGhRmaXRjUNcb3Tqg","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[248,249,146,16,140,31,2185,355,1363],"class_list":["post-37361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-android","tag-androidapp","tag-backup","tag-icloud","tag-imessage","tag-ios","tag-ios-16","tag-privacy","tag-whatsapp"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37361"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37361\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37378,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37361\/revisions\/37378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}