[Sylos]

Just get a written permission from all of your contacts that you're allowed to upload their data to WhatsApp, like the rest of us clearly have.

Or make it so that no one has anything against you ever. Because people have been sued already for uploading their contacts' information to WhatsApp without permission.

I really don't want to encourage you to use WhatsApp, but one possible solution would be to use this app: https://f-droid.org/app/opencontacts.open.com.opencontacts

It's a separate store for your contacts, so that you don't have to use the Android contacts implementation where every app and their mum wants access to.

However, mind that WhatsApp is not going to be particularly user-friendly whether you do this or block access to the contacts in newer Android versions. It won't display people's names until they've chatted to you (and then only in a shitty secondary GUI), so you will often have to guess from their picture who they might be.

And worse still, there's no way to initiate a chat from within WhatsApp to someone who's not in your contacts.

Thankfully, there's an app for that nowadays, too: https://f-droid.org/app/io.github.subhamtyagi.openinwhatsapp

[yeahitslikethat]

That last part was the big pain. They had to add me when I had it on the newer android but that phone died. Thanks for the empathy.

[codedokode]

Isn't exporting a contact list a violation under GDPR? Contact names and their phone numbers are a personal information and the app must get that person's consent to process their data.

[_phaq]

Let me put it like this: I consider it only a matter of time before a lawsuit for this completes and Facebook has to pay a multi-million dollar fine. A lawsuit against WhatsApp was filed in the night that the GDPR became active: https://noyb.eu/4complaints/

The lawsuit is not just for this matter, it's rather because users were forced to consent to the privacy policy in order to continue using the services, which is very hard to justify under the GDPR, but I presume/hope, they will also look into what WhatsApp wanted users to consent to and how they presented it (89 screens full of legalese).

In theory, there is some clause in WhatsApp's terms of service which requires every user to get that written permission from all their contacts that I joked about.

One actual thing that WhatsApp will be able to cling to, is that they do have a 'legitimate interest'. Without uploading these contacts, their service would not anymore grow at even just half the pace.