Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
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If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
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"Whatsapp Contacts Bypasser": Open a chat in Whatsapp using only a phone number! (github.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

10 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Whatsapp is privacy invasive, and we likely know that even when using E2EE, this is possible due to metadata tracking.

An easy way to avoid one creepy thing, contact scanning and the creation of "who knows whom" social nets, is to not grant apps permission to your contacts!

But this is not easy, as apps often enforce this, just as they do with

embedded cameras instead of using the system camera
embedded galleries instead of the 2 available portals (but Google will soon forbid that)
asking for unneeded permissions

Only GrapheneOS also allows blocking these permissions

sensors
internet
loading code from memory i.e. from the internet (why would they do that? Is there something they want to hide?)
debugging their own code to spy on the system behavior

But this app can help everyone on any Android to at least fix this :)

top 10 comments

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 hours ago

can't you already do that? by clicking on the "new chat button" and pasting the phone number i can start the chat without adding to contacts; at least on whatsapp business that works

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

Launch Chat also does something similar. Works for signal and telegram:

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.vinaygopinath.launchchat/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 13 hours ago

Or just use Signal which already does this.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago

Whatsapp is terrible. Not trying to diss you for using it. Do what works for you. I just don't understand the appeal with all of the alternatives.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago

you don’t need a 150mb app for it, just type wa.me/phonenumber to your browser lol

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/dev.theolm.wwc/

Does something similar.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Haha that one. It is 150MB in size, for such a simple app. Pretty damn crazy

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

150MB???

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

Strange, maybe android messed something up? The release on F-Droid is 14MB, but installed it was 150MB for me.

Still bigger 😛

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago

There is also [email protected] where you can crosspost