Univ. of New Haven Cyber Lab: WhatsApp Collects Phone Numbers, Call Duration, and More

An anonymous reader writes: A recent network forensic examination of popular messaging service WhatsApp at the University of New Haven's Cyber Forensics Research & Education Group is offering new details on the data that can be collected from the app's network from its new calling feature: such as phone numbers and phone call duration, and highlights areas for future research and study. The researchers provided an outline of the WhatsApp messaging protocol from a networking perspective, making it possible to explore and study WhatsApp network communications. (Also noted at The Register.)

Comments

Nobody gives a shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, everybody knows that WhatsApp was shite, is shite and will forever be shite. It does not matter. Everybody uses it, so everybody keeps using it. You would have to pay people to make them switch. It's not going to happen.

Re:Nobody gives a shit.

[hjf]

It's unbelievably slow, heavy, feature lacking. Useless web ui "whatsapp web" that takes ages to load and still requires you to have whatsapp open on your phone in order for it to work.

You can't refuse to join groups: you're forcefully added and multimedia shit downloaded to your phone without your permission.

Whatsapp also works very hard against "modders" and COMPLETELY REFUSES to let you run multiple phone numbers on a single phone: one person-one phone. Company number AND personal number? Fuck you. Dual sim phone? Fuck you very much. It's like facebook: ONE PERSON, ONE PROFILE. Multiple profiles? HACKER!!!!!! DELINQUENT!!!!

Telegram is far lighter, runs on a lot of platforms and overall feels a lot more well built than this shit. Lose your phone? no problem, telegram is still open on your tablet, computer, or whatever device you want it to run on.