DeGoogle Yourself

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A community for those that would like to get away from Google.

Here you may post anything related to DeGoogling, why we should do it or good software alternatives!

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Best option to run WhatsApp (lemmy.ml)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

27 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I have to have WhatsApp installed on one of my phones for work purposes. It's not possible to ask my work to give me a phone (I'm on zero-hours contract). I do have two phones - one DeGoogled pixel running CalyxOS and one iPhone XS. The iPhone I use for banking apps and basically anything that ties directly to me. Apple Pay and so on. Then I use the DeGoogled phone for everything else - most communications done over Signal, taking photos etc. This is my daily driver.

My question is this - is there any way to make WhatsApp as private as possible? I'm fine knowing WhatsApp reads all my messages etc (not really fine per se, but what choice do I have) but what I really don't want is telemetry. So which phone should I install it on? The private one to limit telemetry, or the regular phone to stop any telemetry from my private phone being read? Or is there some way I can remotely host an instance of WhatsApp or something?

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 7 months ago (13 children)

I have a similar setup and decided to install it on my degoogled phone because I definitely wanted to use a VPN to connect to Whatsapp and my other phone is an older Android without the global VPN option.

I have it completely isolated from my main account by using Shelter from F-droid, installing Aurora store in that sandbox and then installing Whatsapp from Aurora into the work profile created by Shelter.

This way, my main contacts and media are not accessed by Whatsapp. It does its own separate thing and I have no other apps interacting with it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I fail to see any benefit in a VPN proxy for WhatsApp.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Meta scum don't get my IP? Its better than nothing

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

I again fail to see how that helps you in any way when they've got a part of your social graph and active times and other much more critical metadata.

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