Thanks for the clarification, i read you wrong, and you are completely right. Whats worse is that even if you are a bit savvy or informed is hard to fully get away from them. But anyways, even if i cant escape them i will try to give the minimum data possible.

whatsapp requires phone numbers. surely they can be called

Sadly the phone number is only for messages, in most cases it’s automated with a bot giving you options.

if you have tech skills, try running a matrix bridge

I didn’t know about matrix bridges. To be honest i’m not familiar with matrix but i have been learning about networking and self host on the side. I could make it part of the project.

Thanks for the suggestions! I should interact more with the community, i have been receiving lots of good feedback recently, i was always a lurker on reddit.

In Latin America most public services, banks ans bussines uses whatspps as their main support line.

To give you an example, if you have no water in your house you need to report on wp. No other way. And this is the standard for a lot of services, wp is the ONLY way to ask for support.

Also, if you are a freelancer or have a bussiness, your clients expect you to have whatsapp, 90% of inquiries and sales goes through wp.

It’s a nightmare, i really want to get rid of meta services but it is impossible for my case.

I have decided to decouple what i can, and use different phones for meta services, but i suspect that they still correlate and collect data. (Based on location, wifi, mac of iot, browsing etc)

Anyways, i ask people to be aware that for some of us, our situations makes impossible to remove some of the meta, microsoft or google services.

My aproach for now is to only use the minimum neccesary, i still search for ways to gradually switch out what i can.

Whatever i can’t rid off, i have another phone for it, how effecrive this is idk but for now is the best solution i found.

Nice suggestion i will look it up, thank you!

Thanks for the reply, i will keep it mind.

I will keep it in mind, i will be mindful of commands and flags. No typing without being certain of what each command does.

Thank you, even if its simplified, the browser example was really helpful. So in summary, having software up to date and being aware of what you do, should in most cases be safe. I was asking just in case there was some configuration i should do before connecting. With browsing i know that if i use something like firefox and ublock, i should be safe from most malware unless i screw up pretty bad. I will probably research ssh a bit more, as how it works, but you put some fears away. Thank you again.

Thanks for the tip!