Earlier last year WhatsApp announced partnership with Open WhisperSystems to integrate the ratcheting forward secrecy protocol found in their app called TextSecure, into WhatsApp. The protocol is supposed to provide end-to-end encryption between WhatsApp clients. So far it has been implemented only in WhatsApp on Android, with the rest of platforms yet to come. The implementation however has already made it into unofficial WhatsApp libraries which allow developers to use WhatsApp service in their applications, starting with a python-library called yowsup, and the rest will follow. It’s worth mentioning that none of those libraries are supported nor approved by WhatsApp, so one has to wonder if WhatsApp is going to take some legal action (again) against them.
I would strongly advise against using any non-WhatsApp approved clients. Users of the unofficial WhatsApp client for Sailfish, Mitakuuluu, got banned from WhatsApp for using an unofficial client, after which Mitakuuluu’s developer ceased development. Know what you’re getting into!
I would strongly advise against using Whatsapp. It’s a Facebook, proprietary, crappy, bloated, privacy nightmare, locked down POS.
Trust me, if you just refuse to use it your real friends will start to use something different.(Telegram, Threema, Jabber+OTR, …)
Whatsapp, $16 billions, money, have no odor.
Even the NSA tries to stick its nose everywhere to check for some kind of smell.
Don’t have a dirty life ? No worries…
I don’t know if you are right or wrong. Maybe you could motivate that a bit?
It’s a Facebook….so free and popular with all the people that you want to communicate with already there
proprietary….not many people care. How many lines of codes have you reviewed/edited/added to any of the alternatives?
crappy….seems to be always up, fast, easy interface, cross-platform, cheap/free and provides clear message-status
bloated…it hardly has any functions besides sending text messages and pictures
privacy nightmare…this article is specifically about the end-to-end-encryption and mentions the problems with that. You might have a point, but I wonder if people care
locked down POS….^^see proprietary
I also prefer other applications to WhatsApp, but that is because those are better overall communication platforms. I do use WhatsApp for simple chatts with family/friends and it works just fine
Yes, I understand the issues here.
But I happen to be very fond of Whatsapp and I have been using it since long before I discovered Facebook.
The registration is very easy. It only costs 1 dollar a year or something. It is very convenient.
The privacy concerns only affect US citizens because of the NSA. It is very unlikely that the NSA cares the least bit about what I type on Whatsapp.
It’s not like I have something to hide or anything of the sort.
SMS is 9 cents where I live and it is 5 times that much for international SMS. Whatsapp is 1 dollar a year. It is very convenient and cheap.
I’m not going to sacrifice convenience to paranoia. But thank you for your advice.
Edited 2015-01-06 15:25 UTC
I’ve always been really creeped out by WhatsApp, simply because it grabs all your contacts automatically. That’s an app permission I’ve always been highly wary of.