Hacker News Reader

Comment by TeeWEE | Hacker News Reader

While i agree whatsapp web should work in every browser the auther is forgetting one IMPORTANT gotcha:

Whatsapp, is a messaging-routing platform. It doesnt store any messages. Thats what makes whatsapp strong. Its a feature. Thats why you need your phone. Its like SMS. They are not storing all your sensitive message.

If you dont care about storing sensitive messages on servers. Use Telegram/Facebook Messaging, etc...

I think its really a feature, that its not storing your messages.

View on HN

Perhaps someone can answer this for me. I've seen several comments here saying WhatsApp doesn't store conversations. The other day someone sent me a picture on WhatsApp. Before looking at the message I was going through my photo gallery and noticed a random picture I didn't take so I deleted it. When I went to look at the message it was just a blurred out photo of the picture I had deleted and when I clicked it it said the media didn't exist on my SD card. Now, if I log into the web version that picture is fully visible. This suggests to me that they keep at least the pictures on their server. So is it only the text portion they don't keep?

Adding my own anecdotal experience here.

Recently my Z10 got bricked. The only backup available was from April 2014. I bought a new Z10 and restored the backup on that phone. I was expecting that all WhatsApp messages and pictures received between April 2014 and the restoration date would not be available. But, WhatsApp did somehow pull the messages and pictures from recent months. So, where did it restore the messages/pictures from? From other contacts' phones?

WhatsApp definitely stores your messages on their server. They have to. If you send a WhatsApp message to someone and their phone is off, does it bounce? If not, they are storing your messages at some point.

Just because they say they don't store them forever really doesn't mean much, and I am pretty surprised by how many people on HN keep repeating it.

Yes, the photos are indeed stored on the server for some amount of time. If you dig into the obfuscated messages.db file from WhatsApp (I don't know about now, but it used to be encrypted with a known key, and there are tools for decryption available), you'll see that it stores a tiny JPEG thumbnail and an HTTPS URL on their servers where the photo can be retrieved. Though if you try to get to older pics you are just presented an error message that it's no longer available.

Totally agree, this is a feature, not a shortcoming. I use WhatsApp primarily because it is extremely fast when compared to SMS, iMessage is fast as well but not all of my contacts have iPhones.

If I want persistent group chat I'll use Hangouts or IRC/XMPP/Jabber etc. I have hundreds of options for that.

> extremely fast

In what way is, for example, Hangouts slow?

It's slower than WhatsApp in almost all aspects. I can send a WhatsApp message to someone who is 500 miles away on wifi and get a response from them in less than 2 seconds. It takes 2 more than 2 seconds for them to RECIEVE a message on hangouts. I've personally timed this and heard similar experiences with a few other people.

They may not store messages within the Whatsapp system, but facebook is a data mining company first and foremost and an advertising company second.

I think it would be short-sighted to assume they aren't storing your messages somewhere.

But why not just store the messages in the browser memory?

> Its like SMS.

SMS are stored while awaiting delivery during a certain period.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_message_service_technical...

Plus one of the reasons whatsapp is useful is because you know your contacts have it on their phone, so it's like sending them a text message. If they made a standalone web client that you could use without a phone, it becomes just another IM platform.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com