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Ask HN: Is it legal for WhatsApp to cannot export your data?

4 points by maxwellito ↗ HN
WhatsApp is one of the most popular messenging app in the world. Even if it offers ways to backup your data to Google Drive or iCloud, it doesn't offer a way for users to export the data in an interoperable way. Something that would allow me to move my chat data to other apps, like Signal.

Knowing that this data isn't stored on their servers but on users device, is it a way to bypass the GDPR protections?

7 comments

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yorwba
You can request the account information that's stored on their servers: https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/account-and-profile/how-to-...

As for messages stored on your device, they're in a SQLite database, so you can fairly easily write a query to get the data in whatever format you want. If you can't import it into Signal, then only because Signal doesn't have an import tool for WhatsApp database files.

davchana
Sql db is encrypted with key, which is exportable only on Android 7 or lower; by using some ADB commands on non rooted Androids (one of the method).
yorwba
I successfully decrypted my WhatsApp messages from an Android 10 phone, though I don't remember what method I used to get the key.
davchana
I would appreciate if you could find & reply; googling says use an android 7 or earlier.
alokrao
Count me in the wait list. I would love it if you could share the whole steps to decrypt and SQL query. Will pay the favour forward.
sangli
You can email the chat history with media as attachments.
davchana
Its only last few thousand messages. With media, if its more than what email client can handle in size wise, sometimes it gets truncated silently.