Communication is perhaps our most important collective behavior, as it deeply shapes our reality. If we think about communication online, we should ask ourselves how do we want to make it happen. I’ve got my answer, and it’s definitely not WhatsApp.
I remember I started using WhatsApp in 2012, when I bought my first smartphone. It was a Nokia Lumia. I liked the concept of having my chats and conversations inside my pocket, with the ability of sharing photos and videos in an efforless way, compared to SMS and MMS. As it quickly became the norm for online communication, I started to grow skepticism regarding privacy and security. That’s why I got interested in Telegram since it was launched in 2013. I immediately subscribed, realizing that Telegram had so many more features right from the beginning. Then in 2014, Facebook (the most evil company on earth) bought WhatsApp, and that was the moment I finally decided to delete my account for good.
However, due to work, I had to subscribe to WhatsApp again. Unfortunately everyone still uses WhatsApp, despite countless reasons not to use it. So here I am, explaining to you once and for all why you should avoid using WhatsApp as much as you can. Hear me out.
You become more hackable
WhatsApp if full of backdoors. Having WhatsApp installed on your smartphone will make it vulnerable to hackers and other weird entities. I know it sounds like a bold claim, but if you look at what happened in recent years, WhatsApp has been hacked multiple times, like in 2017 and in 2018 a hole let hackers steal a ton of data from users, in 2019 with israeli spyware injected on phones, but also in 2020 and in 2022. This is because WhatsApp was created with multiple backdoors in mind, for all the governmental agencies.
Why should you keep an app full of backdoors and vulnerabilities inside your phone? Even Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon got hacked by the Saudi government through WhatsApp.
Your chats will eventually be lost (by design)
Your personal chats are not safe because they will be lost. WhatsApp is not cloud-based and therefore you are forced to do manual backups of your chats over and over. However, when the data becomes too much and when you change your phone (because you will eventually), reinstoring your previous chats becomes problematic. The main issue is that most of the users don’t pay for cloud storage solutions; therefore the limited amount of space provided for free is not enough in the long run.
You don’t have control over your conversations
On WhatsApp you don’t have control over the messages you send; in most cases you can’t delete old messages and therefore the other speaker always has a backup of your messages available. Also if you delete a recent message, the other speaker gets notified about that. It doesn’t look good.
Thank god on Telegram you can always delete the conversations and make sure the other users are not capable of seeing your old messages anymore. That’s a super powerful feature that gives control over what you send.
You must always provide your personal phone number to others
Whenever you want to ask someone to contact you via WhatsApp, you HAVE to give your personal phone number. I think this is something truly unacceptable because in many cases you don’t want to provide such a private info to everyone.
If you use WhatsApp, your phone number becomes the only way to be contacted by everybody, even when you join groups. And that opens the doors for spammers, data collectors and hackers, because the phone number is something people usually don’t change that often and will make you identifiable everywhere on the internet.
You will miss out on so many important features
There is so much to say here, but I will give you a small list with the most important features missing, so you can understand it by yourself. In other words, WhatsApp is an app for BOOMERS.
- You can’t send big files (you are limited by 50mb, while on Telegram you can send 2gb)
- You can’t send uncompressed pictures (all photos will be resized)
- You can’t sync across multiple smartphones or computers
- You won’t have an iPad app
- There is no support for bots
- There are no tools for creators (such as channels)
- You won’t have a personal unlimited cloud space (unlike Telegram)
- Your backups are unencrypted
- It is often down or slow
- It is owned by Facebook (do you trust that?)
What should you use instead?
There are multiple other messaging apps that are lightyears ahead of the game. The most notable one is Telegram, which is providing a much better privacy and everyday functionality. On top of that, many users already use Telegram, so it won’t be a pain in the ass to convince other users to make the switch.
A second great option is Signal, which is all about privacy and security. On paper it seems great, however you are forced to always provide your mobile phone number, like WhatsApp.
If you want to have the maximum level of privacy available, you should check SimpleX Chat. There’s nothing that comes close in terms of security, anonimity and privacy. However it’s not easy to use and good luck convincing your friends and family.
How to make the switch?
If you are using WhatsApp and you want to switch to Telegram or something else, here is a good hint for you: download WhatsApp Business and convert your profile into a business profile. That way you can set up an autoresponder with a custom message to inform your friends where to text you instead. Pretty cool eh?
Goodluck on your way, I know avoiding WhatsApp is not easy nowadays, but believe me: it’s worth it!