4 ms·

I come from point of ignorance and agree with you. I do not understand what privacy security or anonymity I can have, when we start with sharing my most identi

I come from point of ignorance and agree with you. I do not understand what privacy security or anonymity I can have, when we start with sharing my most identifiable personal information with the app and all my desired contacts. (whatsapp takes it further by refusing to work without full access to your contacts which... Just, no). I feel I'm in a twilight zone as everybody cheerful regresses to apps you have to bootstrap with your phone number and then proceed to basically only work well with your phone - teeny tiny screen with awful keyboard, instead of allowing me seamless access across my communication devices and preferences. Messaging seemed like a solved problem until we made it inexplicably and massively worse.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> whatsapp takes it further by refusing to work without full access to your contacts I’ve never given WhatsApp access to my contacts. Works fine. Just don’t get numbers matched to contacts, which makes sense.
- NikolaNovak 4y ago
  Interesting. Can you initiate a message? I can only talk to people if they've granted access to their contact list, and initiate conversation with me (which is not a solution, just a shifting of problem to others). On android at least, I cannot initiate a conversation with somebody I don't have a going chat with. It won't let me just type in a phone number. Specifically, Clicking "new chat" asks me for contacts permission, and if I say no it simply closes. I have to contact a person out of band and ask them to initiate whatsapp with me. By no definition is my experience "just fine". Is this not your experience? Can two people who have not granted access, converse?
  - hso1 4y ago
    You can open wa.me/<number> on a browser, it'll redirect to a chat on whatsapp.
    - NikolaNovak 4y ago
      Neat! (I would still not call it "just fine" in terms of normal app usage, but it makes my life easier so I thank you for that :)
  - JumpCrisscross 4y ago
    > Can you initiate a message? Yes. There is a little write icon on the top-right of my iOS screen. Click that and paste in the number.
    - NikolaNovak 4y ago
      Fascinating. It will not allow me to initiate conversation on android without access to contact list. I wonder why the platform difference!
- chalst 4y ago
  Perhaps this has changed, but my experience was that the installation wouldn't proceed without granting access. I could prevent the app gaining access to my contacts by using the Android home/work profile so that it would only see an empty contact database. There are other tricks you can use on Android, but I never got it to work on iOS.
joshuamorton 4y ago
Messaging was a solved problem until we wanted to make it secure and private.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

> whatsapp takes it further by refusing to work without full access to your contacts I’ve never given WhatsApp access to my contacts. Works fine. Just don’t get numbers matched to contacts, which makes sense.

NikolaNovak 4y ago
Interesting. Can you initiate a message? I can only talk to people if they've granted access to their contact list, and initiate conversation with me (which is not a solution, just a shifting of problem to others). On android at least, I cannot initiate a conversation with somebody I don't have a going chat with. It won't let me just type in a phone number. Specifically, Clicking "new chat" asks me for contacts permission, and if I say no it simply closes. I have to contact a person out of band and ask them to initiate whatsapp with me. By no definition is my experience "just fine". Is this not your experience? Can two people who have not granted access, converse?
- hso1 4y ago
  You can open wa.me/<number> on a browser, it'll redirect to a chat on whatsapp.
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    Neat! (I would still not call it "just fine" in terms of normal app usage, but it makes my life easier so I thank you for that :)
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > Can you initiate a message? Yes. There is a little write icon on the top-right of my iOS screen. Click that and paste in the number.
  - NikolaNovak 4y ago
    Fascinating. It will not allow me to initiate conversation on android without access to contact list. I wonder why the platform difference!
chalst 4y ago
Perhaps this has changed, but my experience was that the installation wouldn't proceed without granting access. I could prevent the app gaining access to my contacts by using the Android home/work profile so that it would only see an empty contact database. There are other tricks you can use on Android, but I never got it to work on iOS.

joshuamorton 4y ago

Messaging was a solved problem until we wanted to make it secure and private.