Many of us have friends on WhatsApp (or other social networks) and its going to be impossible to make them move on Telegram or Signal. And we don’t want to use anymore those GAFA Apps
Does anybody found a WhatsApp bridge to Telegram or Riot ?
It seems possible but I did’nt find any recent (and stable?) bridge
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Roit does have a telegram bridge. As far as I know, you can’t create a whatsapp bridge because missing API.
I’m using whatsapp via island app. With shelter whats app is also working, but shelter does have some problems we e.
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Is there a tutorial how to use whatsapp via the island app?
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no, but it’s easy.
– Install shelter or Island
– add all kontacts do you need for whatsapp
– clone yalp or aurora into your work profile
– install with the cloned store whatsapp
– start whatsapp and complete whatsapp install
– be happy 
on my oero devices shelter is working. So better use shelter as island. shalter is a FOSS version of island
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Hi, @harvey186, sorry, I’m quite new at this… What do you achieve by doing that? Using whatsapp without leaking data? Or just using whatsapp via another app?
whatsapp is spying on you like every other facebook app. And it is copying the whole adressbook to his own server, incl. all information which are stored in your contacts.
In shelter (island) I have setup only theses contacts I really use in whatsapp and I only have added the nickname and the phone number, nothing more. So Zuckerberg doesn’t get a lot information from me 
and he doesn’t have access to my browser data and searches and so on
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Thanks for explaining! 
Hi @harvey186,
what do you mean by…
– clone yalp or aurora into your work profile
and how do I do it ?
Thanks!
Massimo
OK, got it.
For anybody else reading: go to your main list of apps, tap the Aurora app until a dialogue window appears that says “clone to Shelter”, and just do it.
Does anybody know a simple way to download contacts FROM Whatsapp?
(here: Android and Mac)
Thanks!
Mhm, don’t understand that. WhatsApp is using all.your contacts from your adressbook, it had no special WhatsApp contacts
On my old Android phone, yes, for sure.
On my new /e/ phone I haven’t installed Whatsapp yet. I would like to download a list of the contacts with whom I had a chat on Whatsapp, plus a few “groups”. And then feed this much smaller contacts file to Whatsapp on the new phone (using Shelter).
But it’s not clear to me how to download the data I need from Whatsapp.
that will be very hard and I think you can’t solve this. WhatsApp does have to ways to make backups, local and gdrive. But on e you can*t access gdrive and the restore of local backup isn’t working under shelter.
I have created a WhatsApp group in my address book and assigned all needed contacts to this group. Than I have exported these group (member) to vcf file and imported this vcf file in in shelter contacts.
But conversions and whatsapp groups, I don’t know how to transfer. That’s the worst on whatsapp, you will always start ‘fresh’ on a new device. Not as it is in Telegram where you always have all available equal which device you are using.
So I will have to create this new and smaller “contacts” file by hand,
one contact at a time, plus also recreate my “groups” by manually,
and then upload it to shelter contacts and feed it to the beast (Whatsapp)?
create a new group inside your address book app. go thru your contacts which you will need for whatsapp and assign them to this group. Than change to view in your address book to only show this group, mark all contacts and export them to vcf (all in one vcf - file) and this vcf file with all your whatsapp contacts transfer to shelter and import them to shelter contacts
Or import ALL contacts to shelter BEFORE installing whatsapp, and delete all not needed contacts from shelter adress book.And than you can istall whatsapp
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Thanks. But what about Groups on Whatsapp?
It’s not great fun, but I can copy and paste the names and phone numbers of every
single contact part of a Group I belong to on Whatsapp. But then what do I do?
Is there a way to create “Groups” that Whatsapp will recognise in a vcf file ?
As I have written before. I see no way to get this groups transferred.
One Question: Why using whatsapp so hard ? You know that it’s spying on you as hell, using your contact info for commercial and reporting all to Facebook and Facebook is selling that data.
I would prefer the swap to telegram. Tell your people about spying and data mining and that they have to swap to telegram.
And you can create your group in telegram and invite them. If someone is nit not following, ask your self if you really need him for messaging. There are SMS and Email for people which won’t swap to telegram 
Two groups are work-related. Very hard to get 20 people to change their mind.
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give it a try. …
I tried this technique with Island, not Shelter, and my Groups showed up. I guess they were stored on the WhatsApp server.
I have a little trouble with finding the right permissions to give. Everything was really walled off. It took a few minutes to give Work Profile apps permission to access the internet and such.