> The fact that it is owned by Facebook is enough to make me stay away.
That’s fair, but I think it’s important to be very explicit if that’s the criticism.
It’s true that Facebook can see your contacts list if you share it with WhatsApp but no one ever claimed that they couldn’t. This isn’t a security vulnerability as such.
The second article you linked is from before WhatsApp’s move to the Signal protocol.
Yes, it’s owned by Facebook and yes, it’s closed source, but WhatsApp has brought end-to-end encryption to over a billion people. For the vast majority of use cases it’s a huge security improvement.
That’s fair, but I think it’s important to be very explicit if that’s the criticism.
It’s true that Facebook can see your contacts list if you share it with WhatsApp but no one ever claimed that they couldn’t. This isn’t a security vulnerability as such.
The second article you linked is from before WhatsApp’s move to the Signal protocol.
Yes, it’s owned by Facebook and yes, it’s closed source, but WhatsApp has brought end-to-end encryption to over a billion people. For the vast majority of use cases it’s a huge security improvement.