Comms: What's up with WhatsApp?

WhatsApp is an example of that most simple of ideas: take one element of a much bigger program do that element right. The difficulty application developers face when they do this is that - for example - buyers see "communications suite" and decide that more is better and so when WhatsApp is described as "an instant messaging service" it seems, somehow diminished by that simplicity. Or, worse, those who have, over the years, tried services like ICQ and turned away from the whole IM concept decide not even to look at it.

But WhatsApp is a child of a much more modern time and it is growing exponentially partly due to the viral (in a good way) nature of modern comms.

In short, think of the chat box in Facebook (or a thousand similar products) or, more closely, the chat function in Skype. But without all the additional stuff that comes with it. Or, to make it even more simple, think SMS.

That's the essence of WhatsApp: it's a tiny program, or "app" for the iPhone, Android phones and Blackberry. And it works - from the user's perspective, in exactly the same way as SMS: type, attach a file if required, send. But unlike SMS, it does not use the mobile phone network - it's a pure internet application. Therefore users must have access to either a data plan on their phones or wifi. Both are almost ubiquitous for many people - after all, that is what, largely, has driven the success of smart phones.

It's fast. It's clever: users know if a message has been delivered and if it's been opened - that's better than e-mail. It has a tiny overhead on the mobile device. And - perhaps most importantly - there is no learning curve: anyone who uses SMS already knows how to use it.

Better than Skype Mobile is the file transfer: click a paper clip and select a file to send. This is not available for Skype in Android and we can't find it if it's available in the iPhone version. Conference-chat is also simple in WhatsApp.

But there is one major problem: users have no effective control over their privacy.

Users have no control over whether another WhatsApp user adds them to their contact list. WhatsApp says that this is no different to SMS but that's not entirely so: with SMS, there is a cost - especially to foreign destinations - and to some people that is a a disincentive. But there is no cost (except to a user who is using a pay-as-you-go data package from a mobile service provider) to sending a WhatsApp message.

When a user installs WhatsApp, it searches the phone's address book and compares the telephone numbers it finds with the WhatsApp database. If it finds a match, then it adds that matched address to the WhatsApp contact list held on the user's phone - there is no facility to exclude any user. The other party does not know this has been done unless and until he updates the address book on his own phone. Then he finds that new users are added to his address book - whether he likes it or not.

Say, for example, that a person has his insurance agent's details in his address book: WhatsApp connects him to that insurance agent who, of course, he might not want to have such ready access to.

Unlike Skype where a user can choose several settings including "invisible," WhatsApp users are instantly visible to all of their contacts as soon as they log-onto the service. And like so many chat programs, "typing" is displayed when the user is preparing a message. Not only are users visible when they use the service but the system also displays the time that their previous session ended.

This means that any user can check if any other user is on-line or, if not, when that person was last on-line.

One female user says that a former boyfriend - with whom she used WhatsApp while they were together - now monitors her use. He knows that she only uses the service on WiFi and that, when she is at home, she turns it on and leaves it on so as to replace SMS amongst her friends. Therefore, if he sees that she is on-line for any length of time, he knows she is at home.

She now uses WhatsApp in the way that we all used to use e-mail in the days of 14.4kps dial-up services: log on, upload prepared messages, download new messages and log off. That, she says, defeats much of the convenience of the service.

WhatsApp does not provide any facility to simply remove a person from the locally stored address book nor to actively deny the cross-linking of data to a third party without express consent - in short, that a "connect" request (a la Skype) must be accepted before the parties are connected.

There is a "block" facility but this only acts to prevent the delivery of a message from a blocked person. The user's status remains visible to the blocked person. So in the case above the woman can prevent delivery of messages but the former boyfriend is still able to see if she is on-line or when she was last on-line.

WhatsApp say that this can be avoided by setting the status to "no status" but tests on both an iPhone and an HTC running Android Froyo showed that this only affected the status as shown in the contact list: when the list of messages relating to the other person is opened, the status is shown at the top of the screen.

It is this lack of control over who can connect, who can remain connected, who can see current and past presence that is causing concern for some users.

WhatsApp is an excellent idea, brilliantly executed. It's free for the first year of each user's account and then such a small monthly fee afterwards that it's not worth thinking about - for many users it will be less than the cost of half a dozen normal SMSs.

But user's safety and security are potentially compromised. And that's why some users are uninstalling the package.

And when they do, guess what? Those who have those former users in their WhatsApp address book on their phone can still send messages to it. And, at least on Android, we did not find a way of terminating the account before uninstalling the app.

WhatsApp says that some of these issues are under review and later versions will have improved privacy options.

It is to be hoped that all of these issues are resolved for it's a cracking program that has many advantages over SMS, not the least of which is that it can be used in places which have WiFi but no mobile phone access - such as many courtrooms, hospitals, etc.

But not if the whole world (or at least that part of it that knows the user) knows it's turned on.