Following the mass exodus from Facebook, mainly due to its ability to monitor your every online move, many people (especially younger generations) have taken to WhatsApp to become their message and file sharing program of choice.
Not only does WhatsApp send files and share photos amongst selected groups without charge, it is also seen by many as far more secure than other online applications.
But as it turns out, WhatsApp is no more secure than any other online facility and could even be providing information about you while you sleep. Although the men behind the app certainly aren’t going to send a post to let you know.
The Issue At Hand
Back in September last year it first came to light that no WhatsApp user can be completely secure.
Even if your intended hacker doesn’t even use WhatsApp, all they need is your phone number to discover your online status at any time of the day or night.
And, on the surface, this seems like pretty light information to be sharing with the world. But when you consider how many people would be interested in such information, it all get a bit more chilling.
How Your Data Is Used
There are thousands of companies around the world that will pay good money to know when you are awake and when you are not, when you go online and when you prefer not to be contacted.
And what about that person who wants to target you personally, once they know your online and offline activity patterns, they can probably sketch out your entire daily schedule.
But What Happened To Privacy?
Ultimately this is a glitch in the system that no one saw coming. The online status within the WhatsApp program is not actually controlled by internal coding but by a subscription service, meaning anyone can gain access.
And because such a service is controlled outside the confines of the App, even if you change all your privacy settings to the most secure, this back door remains always open.
How To Keep WhatsApp Secure
The easiest way to keep your data secure is to realise that nothing you send through the general ether of the web is going to stay private. And if you can accept this, then the issue at WhatsApp will not bother you at all.
But if you do feel that your online activity should be protected, then use a high quality VPN service like Easy Hide VPN to go online.
Such a service will hide the IP addresses of your devices, disassociating your physical location from your online presence.
The Future for WhatsApp
But as far as WhatsApp is concerned, they are keeping their chat facilities well and truly closed, with absolutely no response from them on how they are looking to solve this issue.
And since the App was actually bought by Facebook back in October 2014, the illusion of rebelling against the social media giant by moving to this program really becomes as mute as the programmers now seem to be.
Will this be the final nail in the coffin for WhatsApp? We wait to see.