Years ago I installed WhatsApp on my phone. When I opened it up for the first time, I was asked if I wanted to upload my entire contact list onto their servers.
I was unsure if I should really do this, as the contact data is not mine to give away. There is no way I could choose which of the contacts I wanted to share with WhatsApp, and in the end decided I would rather just delete the application.
Now I’m revisiting the idea of installing WhatsApp.
I still hate that in the terms of use I can find a section which says:
WhatsApp will periodically access your address book or contact list on your mobile phone to locate the mobile phone numbers of other WhatsApp users.
Also, looking at the list of permissions that the application wants as I go to install the application on my phone it does look a little scary.
However, at the same time I assume that the other applications on my phone, Facebook, Linkedin etc have stolen all of this information already.
I would also assume that everyone in my contact list has at least one friend who has installed WhatsApp and therefore transferred their data up to the WhatsApp servers by now.
Is it so bad that I install WhatsApp? If anyone would have an objection please let me know, otherwise in the next week or so I will probably install the application.