Your employer should provide all the tools needed for you to do your job, including a smartphone if you need it to contact clients. If you are self-employed try to get a used phone online of from a friend, relative, neighbor, etc. and keep it separated from your day to day life.
Sorry to hijack the answer. My institution is giving me all I need. Email, cloud contacts calendar and so on.
Unfortunately it switched from private management to Google services !!
That is unfortunate, but quite honestly data breaches existed well before companies like Google, for many different reasons from info-sec malpractices to straight up theft. Considering the number of such cases popping up everywhere to this very day, it’s clear that which company runs your corporate software suite is the least of your concerns. Instead, enforcing policies to ensure data is handled properly should be one of the top priorities regardless of who is handling it.
This is not to say that I’m okay with having any sensitive information such as bank accounts or transaction records handled by a tech-giant whose business model is based on surveillance.
I understand that it may not be just your own data, but also your colleagues’ and customers’ (depending on what your company/institution does). However, all things considered, unless you are somehow required/forced to mix personal and work life in order to do your job, I don’t think it’s such a big deal.
Thanks @PNJ88_Beast. I’m not forced, of course, to mix private and work life.
BUT
what if I have to give infos on my health ?
And what, if I have to give my personal telephone number to access the G services ?
I guess it really depends on why you are required to provide that kind of information. Drug tests and the like are quite common in many workplaces (although you are usually not giving up any previous information), and it might make sense depending on your type of work. You should make a judgment call and decide whether is justifiable according to your circumstances and applicable law.
As for providing a phone number, you should be able to dispute that. It doesn’t make sense to use your personal number in order to gain access to a company tool. If it was any other licensed software ie., Photoshop, Microsoft Office or even WinRar, you wouldn’t be expected to provide your own license.
Just another information: the WhatsApp policy change will NOT apply to Europe countries!
I`ve seen it around on the Internet like https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55573149
Since I’m in Brazil… 
let’s get away from it.
I’ve seen that article too and I don’t believe it is completely accurate. See my reply in a different thread, also mentioned in an earlier post
“For the avoidance of any doubt, it is still the case that WhatsApp does not share European region WhatsApp user data with Facebook for the purpose of Facebook using this data to improve its products or advertisements,” … However, the new version of the privacy policy for European users explicitly says that data can be shared with other Facebook companies to show personalised advertising and offers, make suggestions for content, and “help” to complete purchases, among other reasons.
And there we have it: a loophole.
Yep.
Words that say they won’t and others that say they might…kkk
We’re better off not trusting them anyway. 
I, myself, am removing WA from my main phone this weekend. I got another phone with /e/ and only WA installed.
I’ve already told everyone and I’ll reach them by using Element and Matrix.
This morning I was discussing with a friend on the fact that our - previously quite short - list of contacts on Signal is increasing on a hourly basis.
We were not able to discern if this is an effect of willing to leave WA or to follow the Amazon boss.
Which are your ideas on the matter ?
What do you mean by “follow the Amazon boss”?
In Italian newspapers in the past days, some articles appeared where it was written that Elon Musk suggested / declared that he switched to Signal
Ah, but Elon Musk is CEO of Tesla (and others), but not of Amazon.
We were not able to discern if this is an effect of willing to leave WA or to follow the
AmazonTesla boss.
It’s hard to say, people have been happily surrendering their data for years despite public knowledge of how it was being misused by companies. Note that it’s about leaving WhatsApp but not other Facebook companies or social media.
With so many things going down at the same time, I just think people are more willing to make a change. A public figure like Elon Musk proposing this change probably has a lot to do with it, but had he recommended something like Threema or whatever other messenger then my money is that’s where most people would be turning to. Likewise, had he recommended to move away from Instagram it probably wouldn’t have worked since there’s nobody talking about it even though is also a Facebook company.
Either way I’m happy he did this and we should take advantage and convince more people to switch. It’ll be a domino effect: the more people, the easier to convince others!
I just can say that I was astonished to see how many of my contacts use signal. I guess most of them use signal along with WhatsApp but never mentioned it.
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As side note to this topic, may I propose you to watch this video?
The awakening of the masses about privacy matters is just the top of the iceberg.
It is also important to know ”where" our data goes and where it is stored.
This is particularly important for Europeans as we feed massively both US and China with our data.
https://youtu.be/cxFQ24IlXcU
Hi,
I am slowing moving out of Whatsapp, and I would like to save some conversations.
I have tried the following method from Whatsapp: Export chat > then I have chosen the mail app > I have saved the mail Whatsapp created as a draft. The conversation is TXT file attached to the mail, and it can be saved and read locally.
Do you know if there is app capable of displaying the conversations like the messaging apps?
The TXT file can be opened and read from the internal /e/OS file manager, but is not as neat as the messanging apps… Perhaps somebody has some good advice. Thank you in advance.
If this is not the right thread for this question, please let me know where I should move it.
There are some discussions about it over at the Signal forums but for now it seems there’s no easy way to do it. It may be worth holding on to the backup however in case this features is added in the future, but for now I’ll leave the links that I found relevant here for you to research a bit more on your own.
Thank you @ PNJ88_Beast for the answer
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