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I mean they could have used at least some kind of ID or hash instead of the actual number for the URL.
by dirtnugget 6y ago
I mean they could have used at least some kind of ID or hash instead of the actual number for the URL.
- kevincox 6y agoIt doesn't matter much because once you are in whatsapp the primary key is the phone number. It would be really nice if you could share a revocable identifier that could be used instead of a phone number, but I guess this would require a lot more code changes.
- londons_explore 6y agoAnd a big benefit of a phone number is that if I want to contact the same person on Snapchat, or some other service, I can. Per service identifiers just build walled gardens and in the end hurt users. Phone numbers are the perfect identifier because the default is 1 per person, but you can easily get a few more if you want to be anonymous, split business from home, have two personalities, etc.
- kevincox 6y agoI'm not arguing that using phone numbers doesn't have benefits. I'm just saying that WhatsApp intrinsically shares your number so obfuscating the URL will provide little benefit. At the end of the day if you want to allow people to contact you without sharing your number you would need something like that I proposed. And in that case you would explicitly be trying to isolate from your other contact methods so your "benefits" become drawbacks.
- dirtnugget 6y agoWell that’s fine to show the number within WhatsApp but using the number in a widget is just asking for crawlers to get it.