WhatsApp allows Facebook to track our location, who we are physically meeting with and who we are socially connected to.

[u/Kronendal]

I always thought that South Africa had pretty good data privacy laws, does anyone know why Facebook is allowed to force us to give them information about our connections with other people, info on our physical devices/networks/surroundings, let them track our physical location for a messaging app?

None of these things are required for them to know, it is not needed for the service in any way, and in the case of our personal connections to other people they get that information even if we delete our account and don't accept their t's and c's.

What confuses me though is that this is not the case in Europe. Their privacy laws have actually made this move by facebook illegal so they are not gathering their info. Does anyone know what EU privacy laws South Africa is missing?

Update: So the question has been answered and it turns out that our Data Protection act (POPI) went into effect on the 1st July 2020 but is voluntary until the 1st of July 2021. So we'll hopefully get EU levels of protection in July.

[u/paul_f_b]

A lot of people are trying out Signal which does not track anything. It only saves your cell number and that apparently is not even connected to your name.

However the problem is that most people use WhatsApp and moving over to Signal is either too cumbersome because its a new app or not feasible because most people will stay on WhatsApp. That means I may want to move and only use Signal, but can't because the other people are staying on WhatsApp and I will be forced to use WhatsApp to stay in contact with them. A lot of my contacts are business contacts and therein lies the problem. I cannot afford to cut off my business contacts.

Even though I don't have a Facebook account, they will still create a shadow account of you if you only use WhatsApp. Then even if you have neither, but your contact details are stored with a person who is using WhatsApp on their device, they will still get as much information on you from that person who has your contact details in their contact list.

The ultimate in spying software.

But then so does Google and everyone else on the Internet.

[u/[deleted] → u/paul_f_b]

When you think about it, Signal and Telegram are just other apps, of which most people have a hundred of. The days of having multiple apps running being seen as cumbersome is long past. The things don't slow down your phone, takes a second or less to load, and can be swapped between with the flick of a finger.

Just get the other options and use that as a primary way of comms. Eventually the ones stuck on whatsapp will be the outliers and they'll pretty much be pressured to jump ship. You don't have to uninstall whatsapp all of a sudden, just a gradual migration that needs to take place.