How to improve your privacy 1.1 Whatsapp
Whatsapp is one the most used chat apps, basically everyone uses it. Therefore, even if you don’t like it you’re kinda forced to use it if you want to stay in touch with friends and family. There’s a few setting that you might want to change to make it a bit more private.
Understanding Whatsapp
Whatsapp is a part of the Facebook family, so that should be a huge red flag right there. However, since 2016 Whatsapp supports end-to-end encryption, that means that nobody on Facebook can read your messages. That’s a wonderful thing. However, Facebook can still access both phones in a conversation and mine some data about them. There’s actually nothing you can do about that besides stop using Whatsapp but that’s not the point.
Turn on two-factor authentication
This is very important, if you want to secure your messages this should be enabled. Actually this should be enable everywhere you can.
The normal way two-factor authentication would work is by sending you a code that would allow you to access the app. But with you opening the app on an average of 50 to 100 times a day that would be impractical. So instead Whatsapp will ask you for a pin every other time and if your phone has fingerprint reader you can make Whatsapp only available after that scan too.
Turn off cloud backups
Sure cloud backups sound amazing, if you’re on Android you just connect to your Google Drive and you’re good to go. But there’s a catch. First you’re getting Whatsapp access to your Google Drive. Second the messages aren’t actually stored securely. This means, if your google account is hacked people will be able to see your messages.
Stop people ouside our contacts from seeing your info
Two things you need to turn off right now. First it’s your public profile the shows your information to everyone and can be mined at will. Second is stop people from outside your contact from adding you to group chats. This will stop those annoying spam messages we get from time to time.
Stop using whatsapp and move to signal
This is obviously impossible for most people. I know it is form me. I actually only know a few people that uses signal and I don’t know anyone that only uses it. But if you can do that, good for you, you just made it one step forward protecting your data.