Does anyone use Whatsapp? Recommend it?

[US 41]

There are some places in Mexico I am interested in visiting and their best line of communication appears to be WhatsApp messaging which I am not very familiar with. Apparently WhatsApp is very popular there and something a lot of folks use regularly. I've been watching some videos on YouTube trying to figure out if I should make one. I guess it uses your actual phone number, which I suppose is okay?

Does anyone on here use it or have any advice on if I should create one or not? I'm assuming it must be pretty safe to use since so many people use it, right?

[JayhawkCO]

WhatsApp is great for traveling overseas. No one uses SMS other than the U.S. and Canada. For my upcoming trip to Asia, I'll have multiple e-sims set up for each country and people can still call me on WhatsApp with my normal number despite those sims only having data and not voice/text. It's also great for messaging people overseas from the U.S., something I do quite a bit when booking things in advance.

[skluth]

I have a cousin in Portugal. When my brother and I visited her, we all used WhatsApp to contact each other instead of a long distance call. My cousin uses it fairly regularly as her daughters live in France and China, and they all travel extensively. I do occasionally get spam texts every couple months (often from international numbers) but its infrequent and much less than the spam I get otherwise. But I haven't gone outside the US since 2019 and don't know anyone but a few relatives outside the country so I haven't used it in a couple years.

[formulanone]

Use at your own risk; I got a ton of robocalls about five days after joining WhatsApp, whereas I had very few beforehand. There's always the possibility that something else spammed me, but that's the first app I'd directly given permission to use a phone number, so that seems to be the quickest path to unwanted calls.

The only reason I was continuing to use it was to respond to a specific text in a chain (helpful when family discussion goes in several places at once), but now the latest iOS can do that, so I've stopped using it when in the US.

I'm not a Messenger fanboy but I was using that during international travel (and on a Delta flight) for years without a major phone spam issue, oddly enough; maybe because FB doesn't directly have my phone number.

[JayhawkCO]

You can block WhatsApp calls in permissions and just use it for messaging. I get a spam message maybe once every three weeks or so.

[Chris]

The U.S. seems to be somewhat of an outlier in regards to WhatsApp popularity. WhatsApp is highly popular in much of Europe, in many countries over 90% of people use it. It is just assumed that everyone uses WhatsApp for messaging. Nobody uses SMS anymore. WhatsApp also seems to have a very high share in much of Latin America, but also in India.

I use WhatsApp Web on my computer, it functions similarly to good old instant messaging like MSN Messenger did in the past.

I haven't had any issue with robocalls through WhatsApp.

[Scott5114]

For once, I'm kind of glad the US is "backward" in this regard. SMS is a perfectly fine protocol for people you don't know well enough to want to add them to a more involved messaging service.

I don't send SMS messages all that often anymore, since my wife and my closest friends are all on Discord. But I wouldn't want to message my parents through Discord. It's nice to have a boundary.

[chrisdiaz]

Like everyone else said, Whatsapp is popular outside of the US and Canada. The popularity of iMessage, FaceTime, and iPhones in the US is definitely the reason, as Whatsapp provides all of those.

[MATraveler128]

I have it, but I've never used it before. I mainly use FaceTime.

[JayhawkCO]

So, tl;dr, WhatsApp is great for anything international and has very few drawbacks. It's of limited use in North America simply due to the fact that no one here has adopted it.

[OCGuy81]

It comes in handy at times.

My wife went on a girls trip recently up into the mountains.  The cabin they rented had Wifi but no data service, so she was able to use WhatsApp to send pics and ensure the kids and I didn't burn the house down. :-)

[JayhawkCO]

It comes in handy at times.

My wife went on a girls trip recently up into the mountains.  The cabin they rented had Wifi but no data service, so she was able to use WhatsApp to send pics and ensure the kids and I didn't burn the house down. :-)

Her phone didn't have WiFi calling available? I can use that to call and text using my normal messages app without any data service.

[OCGuy81]

It comes in handy at times.

My wife went on a girls trip recently up into the mountains.  The cabin they rented had Wifi but no data service, so she was able to use WhatsApp to send pics and ensure the kids and I didn't burn the house down. :-)

Her phone didn't have WiFi calling available? I can use that to call and text using my normal messages app without any data service.

I think she could, but it was a bit laggy.  WhatsApp worked really well in that situation.

[7/8]

I rarely use regular texting now and instead mostly use Messenger. I do have WhatsApp, but only use it for a company group chat. Both apps seem comparable and nice to use, though I think it's nice that WhatsApp is not directly tied to your Facebook account. I also like that these apps have desktop sites too, so I can have them open on my computer while I'm working.

[jp the roadgeek]

I use it for a couple of my group chats where one holdout doesn't have an iPhone and iMessage.  Serves it's purpose.  I have got a couple of rogue texts, but it's been minimal. 

[rlb2024]

I used it a few years ago when our son was studying in the UK.  It worked really well for that.  Haven't used it since he came back to the US.

[Chris]

WhatsApp gained popularity in Europe almost overnight, because texting was free as opposed to SMS. SMS was then used for 2 factor authentication for a while, until that died out as well. I've gotten maybe 6 or 7 SMS notifications over the past year.

Facebook Messenger is not as popular because Facebook usage has declined steeply in most of Europe, being a Gen X / Babyboomer holdout now. Facebook statistics about monthly active users doesn't really represent actual usage of the app, which is much lower than the MAU figures suggest. Almost nobody under 40 uses it as a 'social network' anymore. It's becoming a TikTok-like feed with random nonsense, advertising and suggested or sponsored content.

People more concerned about their privacy use Signal instead of WhatsApp (because WhatsApp is owned by Facebook).

[Rothman]

Eh.  Facebook is for old people keeping in touch with their old friends.

I'm not sure the Reels are catching on.

[vdeane]

WhatsApp gained popularity in Europe almost overnight, because texting was free as opposed to SMS. SMS was then used for 2 factor authentication for a while, until that died out as well. I've gotten maybe 6 or 7 SMS notifications over the past year.

Facebook Messenger is not as popular because Facebook usage has declined steeply in most of Europe, being a Gen X / Babyboomer holdout now. Facebook statistics about monthly active users doesn't really represent actual usage of the app, which is much lower than the MAU figures suggest. Almost nobody under 40 uses it as a 'social network' anymore. It's becoming a TikTok-like feed with random nonsense, advertising and suggested or sponsored content.

People more concerned about their privacy use Signal instead of WhatsApp (because WhatsApp is owned by Facebook).

Interesting.  Unlimited texting became standard on US phone plans ages ago.  Maybe that's why we stayed with SMS?

In any case, having to install a third-party app to do messaging when SMS is built right in seems weird to me.

[7/8]

WhatsApp gained popularity in Europe almost overnight, because texting was free as opposed to SMS. SMS was then used for 2 factor authentication for a while, until that died out as well. I've gotten maybe 6 or 7 SMS notifications over the past year.

Facebook Messenger is not as popular because Facebook usage has declined steeply in most of Europe, being a Gen X / Babyboomer holdout now. Facebook statistics about monthly active users doesn't really represent actual usage of the app, which is much lower than the MAU figures suggest. Almost nobody under 40 uses it as a 'social network' anymore. It's becoming a TikTok-like feed with random nonsense, advertising and suggested or sponsored content.

People more concerned about their privacy use Signal instead of WhatsApp (because WhatsApp is owned by Facebook).

Interesting.  Unlimited texting became standard on US phone plans ages ago.  Maybe that's why we stayed with SMS?

In any case, having to install a third-party app to do messaging when SMS is built right in seems weird to me.

This could be partly it, I know cell phones plans in Canada are especially expensive on a worldwide scale.

These apps have better features than my phone's default messaging app (Samsung S10e):
- reacting to posts
- see users' online status (or how long since they were last online)
- see the most recent message each person has read

Does iMessage have all these features? Regardless, it's good for group chats where not everyone has an iPhone. When someone with an iPhone likes an SMS text I wrote, I receive a text saying

to "my text"

which is clunky.

[CNGL-Leudimin]

Wait, SMS is still a thing? I thought it had died out to Whatsapp. Virtually everyone I know uses Whatsapp, but then again, I'm in Europe.

[Bruce]

I migrated away from Whatsapp ages ago with my IRL friends. We use Telegram since it's really lightweight and seems to have a good reputation. Discord is for mainly online friends and interest groups. Family uses a mix of other apps due to their popularity in various countries (e.g. LINE for Japan or KakaoTalk for Korea).

My SMS inbox is basically a secondary email inbox, full of reminders for appointments, random sales from certain stores, or two-factor verification codes.

Wait, SMS is still a thing? I thought it had died out to Whatsapp. Virtually everyone I know uses Whatsapp, but then again, I'm in Europe.

There's a lot of services that still require SMS verification. It's also easier to send out messages over SMS in a limited-data environment (such as a crowded festival or after a natural disaster), so moving totally to data-based messengers would be a stupid move.

[Chris]

Two-factor authentication through SMS is considered to be obsolete and the least safe of the 2FA methods, due to 'SIM swapping'. At least in Europe, ENISA (European Union Agency for Cybersecurity) has recommended against it and governments, banks and other organization have often phased it out.

[hbelkins]

Someone else mentioned Telegram. Isn't it comparable to WhatsApp?

And is there a reason someone couldn't get a Google Voice number and then use it for your WhatsApp number?

Or in the alternative, why not simply just use Google Voice? It calls and texts, although it won't text/SMS videos, only photos.

[JayhawkCO]

Someone else mentioned Telegram. Isn't it comparable to WhatsApp?

And is there a reason someone couldn't get a Google Voice number and then use it for your WhatsApp number?

Or in the alternative, why not simply just use Google Voice? It calls and texts, although it won't text/SMS videos, only photos.

Telegram is comparable to WhatsApp. It's just not used all over the world like WhatsApp.

I have a Google Voice number, but I want to use WhatsApp so my current contacts can still get a hold of me and/or I can still get a hold of them from my current number. When I'm out of the country, I'm going to tell friends and family to text me via WhatsApp instead of using normal SMS. I only use Google Voice to make phone calls to "internationally local" numbers, i.e., when I'm overseas, if I need to call an overseas number, my phone would charge me international rates to call over WiFi (since my phone is an American phone). Calling via Google Voice makes it just a few cents per minute.