WhatsApp Clarifies It's Not Giving All Your Data To Facebook (theverge.com) 92
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: WhatsApp has published a new FAQ page to its website outlining its stances on user privacy in response to widespread backlash over an upcoming privacy policy update. The core issue relates to WhatsApp's data-sharing procedures with Facebook, with many users concerned an updated privacy policy going into effect on February 8th will mandate sharing of sensitive profile information with WhatsApp's parent company. That isn't true -- the update has nothing to do with consumer chats or profile data, and instead the change is designed to outline how businesses who use WhatsApp for customer service may store logs of its chats on Facebook servers. That's something the company feels it is required to disclose in its privacy policy, which it's now doing after previewing the upcoming changes to business chats back in October.
But a wave of misinformation on social media, not helped by Facebook's abysmal track record on privacy and its reputation for obfuscating changes to its various terms of service agreements, has resulted in a full-blown WhatsApp backlash that has users fleeing to competitors like Signal and Telegram. [...] WhatsApp executives, as well as Instagram chief Adam Mosseri and Facebook AR / VR head Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, are now trying to set the record straight, perhaps to little avail at this point.
"We want to be clear that the policy update does not affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family in any way. Instead, this update includes changes related to messaging a business on WhatsApp, which is optional, and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data," the company writes on the new FAQ page. It also stresses in the FAQ that neither Facebook nor WhatsApp read users' message logs or listen to their calls, and that WhatsApp doesn't store user location data or share contact information with Facebook. (It's also worth noting that data sharing with Facebook is extremely limited for European users due to stronger user privacy protections in the EU.) WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart also took to Twitter a few days ago to post a thread (later shared by Bosworth in the tweet above) trying to cut through the confusion and explain what's actually going on. "With end-to-end encryption, we cannot see your private chats or calls and neither can Facebook. We're committed to this technology and committed to defending it globally," Cathcart wrote. "It's important for us to be clear this update describes business communication and does not change WhatsApp's data sharing practices with Facebook. It does not impact how people communicate privately with friends or family wherever they are in the world."
But a wave of misinformation on social media, not helped by Facebook's abysmal track record on privacy and its reputation for obfuscating changes to its various terms of service agreements, has resulted in a full-blown WhatsApp backlash that has users fleeing to competitors like Signal and Telegram. [...] WhatsApp executives, as well as Instagram chief Adam Mosseri and Facebook AR / VR head Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, are now trying to set the record straight, perhaps to little avail at this point.
"We want to be clear that the policy update does not affect the privacy of your messages with friends or family in any way. Instead, this update includes changes related to messaging a business on WhatsApp, which is optional, and provides further transparency about how we collect and use data," the company writes on the new FAQ page. It also stresses in the FAQ that neither Facebook nor WhatsApp read users' message logs or listen to their calls, and that WhatsApp doesn't store user location data or share contact information with Facebook. (It's also worth noting that data sharing with Facebook is extremely limited for European users due to stronger user privacy protections in the EU.) WhatsApp chief Will Cathcart also took to Twitter a few days ago to post a thread (later shared by Bosworth in the tweet above) trying to cut through the confusion and explain what's actually going on. "With end-to-end encryption, we cannot see your private chats or calls and neither can Facebook. We're committed to this technology and committed to defending it globally," Cathcart wrote. "It's important for us to be clear this update describes business communication and does not change WhatsApp's data sharing practices with Facebook. It does not impact how people communicate privately with friends or family wherever they are in the world."
I Don't Give A Fuck (Score:5, Interesting)
Lets make disinformation work in our benefit for a change.
Re: (Score:2)
Thought about this, very tempting but not a good idea.
Maybe it's better to point out what information is still being sent to Facebook - contact metadata is very valuable and revealing, and if they start delivering ads based on message content, that could indirectly send some information about the contents of a conversation to Facebook and/or advertisers. Also, my phone's Privacy Guard once caught WhatsApp accessing my phone's fingerprint reader, WTF was that?
Re: (Score:2)
Been a while since we've had anti-FOSS trolling, it's an improvement from the gratuitous racism I suppose.
Re:I Don't Give A Fuck (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
In GDPR countries I'm not sure they can give your contacts to anyone else, or even collect them for themselves. The contact data belongs to other people who have not consented to it being shared.
We need a test case to get this confirmed. Next time I see an app asking for it I'll make a complaint to the regulator. Problem is as I've had by EU citizenship ripped away against my will it will only count in the UK now, rather than the whole EU, and there is no higher authority than the regulator to appeal to.
Re: (Score:2)
They can't the changes don't apply in the EU or the UK (as GDPR rules still basically apply).
Why shows the claim the change is needed is not true.
Re: (Score:2)
Why did Facebook buy WhatsApp in the first place? Maybe they thought they could monetize it at some point. But more likely they viewed it as some kind of social'y platform that could one day threaten their dominance of all things social. I.e. monopolistic nastiness. Is that 'threat' still there? Could an independent WhatsApp (or anybody else) seriously dent Facebook's position in social networking today?
I guess the same could be said of gmail or google docs. I think Google built Office'y apps, because
Re: (Score:2)
As much as I would love that to work I've found it extremely difficult to get people to move to Signal.
In the end I just sandboxed WhatsApp so it can't access any of my real data, using Shelter from the F-Droid app store.
Re: (Score:2)
So it is clear that the general users of instant messengers do not usually care about open source. However it now seems that they care very much about data min
You're not the solution: you're the problem. (Score:5, Insightful)
Lets make disinformation work in our benefit for a change.
You are a perfect example of what is wrong with the world.
You just said that spreading lies in order to disseminate disinformation is a good thing if it's supporting your side.
You're not the solution: you're the problem.
Re:I Don't Give A Fuck (Score:5, Insightful)
Using deception for people own good is a morally dubious stance.
We had a very public example with the downplaying of the importance of masks in the early stage of the pandemic. Most likely the intention was to prevent hoarding and panic buying, and when we see what happened with toilet paper, it may have been a good thing. But as expected, now that the shortage is no more and public stance has reversed, people are not happy... These things are debatable but the general consensus here seems to be that it is better to tell people the truth.
Using deception to push your own preferences or agenda is pure evil.
What your post exemplifies is that we are all a bit manipulative. We like to blame politicians for lying when we do the same thing to push our favorite software. We like to blame billionaire for tax evasion as we do, or pay for undeclared work. We blame leadership for favoritism when we go towards our friend and family business instead even if they are not the best fit. We are just like the people we hate so much, just on a smaller scale.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Thank you for stating this.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You are dumb.
And probably racist, but definitely dumb.
I thought the racists all switched to Parlor?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You guys raided the Capital building. You killed more Americans that died in the Benghazi attack.
I don't see that going away for you.
Re: (Score:2)
nobody cared about BLM killing cops and kids..
Re: (Score:2)
uh, that was the Boogaloo Bois.
Look Aaron Swenson up, Steven Carrillo, Robert Alvin Justus, Ivan Hunter. Killing men in uniform so BLM would get blamed.
Re: (Score:2)
It's Parler not Parlor.
Shhh! Parler is still down but it'll be kind of hilarious if we can get them all to switch to Parlor.
Re: (Score:2)
How many people with dark skin had Parler accounts?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
BLM and Black Panthers are racist organizations. There's zero question about it in fact. If you're not black, you're not good enough to be part of the group. By definition, that's racisms through exclusion. Though the irony with BLM protestors were the useful idiot progressive white people going along for the ride to helping them to protest. But the reality is they'll never be accepted as part of the black tribe.
And hey, that's all well and good frankly. People have a right to associate with whom they want
Re: (Score:2)
I saw plenty of BLM protests where there were way more white people than black people.
Re: (Score:2)
Na, most racists stayed on Facebook where they have always been.
Re: (Score:2)
They haven't switched. They're oxycodone addicts who've started shooting heroin in the evenings when they need a stronger hit.
Re: (Score:3)
The point here is that you don't have to be "on Facebook" to be using WhatsApp.
Re: (Score:2)
Good point.
If you are on WhatsApp or Instagram or Oculus, you are still dumb.
Though probably less racist than the Facebook people. But still dumb.
Just what they can resell (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
But that doesn`t bother me one bit because I`m dumb!
Re: (Score:2)
You are dumb.
And probably racist, but definitely dumb.
Many who stay are neither. Like most things in life, the decision is not clear cut, and there are serious negative consequences not matter what a person decides
Stay and keep in touch with distant family and friends, or leave, and risk losing contact.
I reluctantly decided to stay, so I could continue to have the somewhat flawed shared experiences Facebook enables, with several people who are important to me. It's far from perfect, but, for me, the benefits of staying outweigh the risks. BTW: this a fairly w
Sorry we got caught (Score:5, Funny)
On behalf of our shareholders we would like to apologize that we got caught and regret the temporary interruption in raping your privacy. We will resume shortly, after the news cycle moves on.
Insencerely,
Digital Warlord Peeping Zook
Re:Sorry we got caught (Score:4, Informative)
Exactly! They never say your private messages are not being parsed for Advertisement profiling you.
They clearly say it "won't affect" whatever is already in place. Which you assume is privacy, but c'mon, it's FaceBook. Do you think whatsapps servers grow on trees?
Also, a good time to remind everyone that *whatsapp group messages are visible to the server*
Re: (Score:2)
Insincerely,
-Digital-Warlord- Caesar of the Internet Peeping Zook
Dude's got a seriously unhealthy obsession with Roman aristocracy
Also, it's $CURRENT_YEAR and slashdot still doesn't support <strike> or <del>
PR nightmare (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: PR nightmare (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, Facebook as a company is on the wrong side of public opinion. Any PR they try to throw at this will backfire.
Facebook is too big, people have no sympathy for them. I am one of those people. I deleted my account (as much as they let you) about 7 years ago, and I'm very happy about it. But they do keep sending me emails, 7 years later.
Facebook is a huge entity, they benefit from their size, and occasionally suffer because of it.
If your company isn't so large, then you can weather this type of storm in a completely different way. Show your concern, put your face out there.
The last thing in the world facebook should do is put Zuckerberg's face out there. People hate him. (largely due to his success...)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Facebook buying WhatsApp may be the death of WhatsApp.
Re: (Score:3)
it seems like on this (rare?) occasion, they did not compromise users' privacy.
I disagree. The fact that they are owned by Facebook means that eventually your information will be accessed by Facebook. They may jump through legal hoops to do it but it will happen, if not now, in the future. You need to realize that if it benefits Facebook then they will do it. Corporate entities are sociopathic in nature, so even a good faith promise by one employee will be run roughshod ignored by another. This is how businesses work.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do you believe the new "clarification"? Also, as others have pointed out, they don't claim they aren't sharing your private data with Facebook, just that whatever they're doing won't change. So even if they're technically telling the truth, it's not exactly reassuring.
Re: (Score:1)
This is hilarious (Score:1)
Slashdot hating facebook is so misplaced its almost funny. You know who is mostly on facebook? Middle aged people and boomers. Young people haven't used it for years. The people crying about facebook are the modern day equivalent of Old Man Yells At Cloud.
Re: (Score:2)
Goodbye Facebook (Score:1)
Policy vs Code (Score:5, Insightful)
So this CODE change may not do that, but once you agree to the Privacy POLICY change, what's to stop them from changing the code in another update? After all, you've been notified and agreed to that sort of thing.
First hit is free.
Re: (Score:2)
The privacy policy did not say they are sharing your data with anyone. Having actually read it (I skipped some bits, but I don't think I missed some hidden "we will sell your chats to advertisers"), I was surprised by the popular opinion about it. I wondered if I misunderstood something, or missed some obvious implication. But no, it seems as though some journalists have simply not been being honest.
Re:Policy vs Code (Score:5, Informative)
The privacy policy [whatsapp.com] rather explicitly does say they share your information with third parties, both directly and (one assumes) indirectly through other Facebook companies. For example:
Or this:
The ONLY exception to that second one is that they don't share your messages with the rest of the Borg. Your personal information, your contacts, any metadata are fair game.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't see that as contravening the rest of the document. In particular, the first paragraph is not a statement about sharing data; it is a statement about safety measures. This is clear because the identical sentence shows up with more information about sharing data (and it is fairly innocuous):
We work with third-party providers to help us operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services. For example, we work with companies to distribute our apps, provide our infrastructure, delivery, and other systems, supply map and places information, process payments, help us understand how people use our Services, and market our Services. These providers may provide us information about you in certain circumstances; for example, app stores may provide us reports to help us diagnose and fix service issues.
Regarding the second excerpt, that does seem worse. An interesting fact is that you can opt out entirely, but new users will not be able to opt out. So your information would be private but you would still be contr
Re: (Score:2)
You think the first sentence is a statement about safety measures, but nothing in the policy confines it to those purposes. "For example" can be taken as a subset of what they share information for -- it is a lower bound, not an upper bound. So a clearer way to read that section is to take out those clauses:
Re: (Score:2)
You think the first sentence is a statement about safety measures, but nothing in the policy confines it to those purposes. "For example" can be taken as a subset of what they share information for -- it is a lower bound, not an upper bound.
On the face of it, I agree with you. But given that the context is contract law rather than conversation, I'm not sure that's right. I'm not sure whether painting a rosy picture (to mislead) is valid, or whether a "reasonable man would assume" line of argument is used for interpretation.
Re: (Score:2)
It’s Facebook for crying out loud, people should be worried about their privacy no matter what product they’re using. Look at Oculus.
It's the wrong direction (Score:2)
The issue is...what direction are they heading?
One or two privacy policy updates per year will all head in the same direction. Eventually they will tell us that it is too expensive to support two separate platforms...
I honestly do not know, but does WhatsApp make money?
If they are not making big money (billions) then it's just a drain on the company, and Facebook will start the merger.
I'd rather trust the Russians, who don't care about my personal exploits, than trust Facebook, who wants to make money by p
Re: (Score:2)
The founder of WhatsApp left facebook because of disagreements about how they want to use user data. That should tell you something. As always, if you aren't paying for it with cash then you're paying for it some other way. There's really no reason to use WhatsApp anymore with Signal available.
Expected something different from FB? (Score:2)
I liken Facebook's action to like a company that says...
We take users' privacy very seriously..."
Re:Expected something different from FB? (Score:5, Funny)
A little late? (Score:2)
We are only getting this response today, which is a full week after the initial fallout. It almost feels like Facebook thought it would be a non-issue, but with so many people jumping to Signal and Telegram they decided to react.
At the same time many people will not make the jump beyond FB and WhatsApp, because they work and feel the value proposition is high enough to stick around, even if there is massive data collection.
It's Not Giving All Your Data To Facebook. (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Their FAQ would like to blow smoke up your ass about what they are doing this week. Their privacy policy would like you to agree that they can send every detail they get from you, except your message content, to Facebook.
It's not all of the data... (Score:3)
(Small print) "We found a few debug log statements on your phone we didn't upload to Facebook."
Like how facebook wouldn't mine 2FA phone numbers? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
Facebook at this stage has had so many "bugs" that have led to data disclosures that "just happened" to make it money, that trusting them is foolish to say the least. Cambridge Analytica is another that springs to mind.
The only way people are going to trust WhatsApp again is if Facebook sells it. And since that's never gonna happen, the only recourse is antitrust law to forcibly break it up.
Let's look at the fine print: (Score:5, Insightful)
We can’t see your private messages or hear your calls, and neither can Facebook:
That is expected, messages and calls are encrypted.
We don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging or calling: While traditionally mobile carriers and operators store this information, we believe that keeping these records for two billion users would be both a privacy and security risk and we don’t do it.
Notice this doesn't say "We don’t keep logs of who YOU are messaging or calling" like all the other subheadings on the page. Instead it says "We don’t keep logs of who EVERYONE is messaging or calling". Implying that they do keep logs of who SOME people are calling, or maybe some of the people they are calling. And why don't they keep full records for everyone? Because with "two billion users" that would be too much data for them to manage. But evidently, a subset of the data is manageable.
So in short, they they DO reserve themselves the right to scrape your call logs and use that as they please.
Do I really need a FAQ? (Score:5, Informative)
Because I can already see a detailed breakdown of all the data collected by these applications on the App Store itself. And the vague promise from FB not to share them now or in the future is worth the FAQ paper it's written on.
Signal
None. (The only personal data Signal stores is your phone number, and it makes no attempt to link that to your identity.)
WhatsApp
Device ID
User ID
Advertising Data
Purchase History
Coarse Location
Phone Number
Email Address
Contacts
Product Interaction
Crash Data
Performance Data
Other Diagnostic Data
Payment Info
Customer Support
Product Interaction
Other User Content
Re: (Score:2)
But what's the alternative (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
slashdot headline, may 2021 (Score:3)
"WhatsApp managers apologise for giving all of your data to Facebook."
Lets see... (Score:5, Informative)
Lets see:
1- They dont charge to use.
2- They have billions of people hammering those servers all the time.
3- They paid a boatload of money for it.
4- They also paid a boatload of money for servers and employees to maintain those servers.
5- Wheres the profit?
Yeah, they are harvesting data somewhere.
Signal it is.
Re: (Score:2)
Signal ...
1- They don't charge to use.
2- They have billions of people hammering those servers all the time.
3- They paid a boatload of money to develop it
4- They also paid a boatload of money for servers and employees to maintain those servers.
5- They are a non-profit but they have costs
Re: (Score:2)
I plan to donate 100$ a year to Signal. How much of eyeball time is needed to generate 100$ of advertisement revenue? After subtracting cost of selling ad space, billing and accounting? 100$ goes a long way. At some point users might be ok with a small fee.
Its time people who say they value privacy to put some money behind the words. Donate what you can. At le
Re: Lets see... (Score:2)
But now is the time to start donating. Remember, it's for a good cause. Telegram will soon also start to try to recoup the investment, or did everyone think that Russian billionaire got his billions by being a philanthropist? He actually already said that Telegram should soon take in several 100 million per year...
Rule #1 - we don't talk about fight club (Score:3)
Rule #2 - never believe anything that is uttered by Facebook execs.
Metadata (Score:5, Interesting)
Metadata is the problem, not the contents of the chats.
Once governments know Facebook has this data, they will want access. That has caused arrests in China in the past: https://www.latimes.com/archiv... [latimes.com], but also wrongful arrests here in US as well: https://www.criminallegalnews.... [criminallegalnews.org]
Yes, Facebook needs to recoup their investments, and needs to make money. But that does not mean we should agree to give up our basic privacy.
They would NEVER violate their own policy! (Score:1)
Why, I'd be shocked, shocked to find out, a company would violate their own policy — thus missing an opportunity to make the world a better place.
Google would never intervene with search-resultst [wsj.com], Twitter promptly and diligently takes down any doxxing [twitter.com] per policy [twitter.com], and Facebook would never allow inherently violent ideologies to use [facebook.com] its services.
Yes, not all the data. (Score:4, Informative)
WA will not share ALL the data. It is planning to share a very small limited set of data not even 1 Kb or so.
The data will be, your name, social security number, date of birth, place of birth, mother's maiden name, the name of the street you lived in, your high school football team mascot, the name of the bully who wiped the gym floor with your ass, name of the girl laughed hysterically when you asked her to be your prom date
Yeah, they're not giving your data to Facebook! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, they're not giving your data to Facebook, they're selling it, which is completely different!
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah, they're not giving your data to Facebook, they're selling it, which is completely different!
More commonly, when they say they're not "giving" or "selling" they're actually renting, allowing them to extract value many times over.
Facebook users need to watch The Creepy Line (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The Creepy Line reveals the stunning degree to which society is manipulated by Google and Facebook and blows the lid off the remarkably subtle – hence powerful – manner in which they do it. Offering first-hand accounts, scientific experiments and detailed analysis, the film examines what is at risk when these tech titans have free reign to utilize the public’s most private and personal data.
Only most of it. (Score:2)
Lying bastards are lying bastards.
Don't trust them. Backpedaling won't work. Especially not as sleazy and psychopathic as this.
IT IS CLOSED SOURCE! There is no privacy! (Score:2)
Nothing they say or do can be trustworthy, whem they won't even show me the damn soure code!
Seriously, in this day and age, you expect me to just *trust* Facebook on this?? Are you insane?
Of course *we* don't (Score:1)
We would never collect your data.. we give it to google who then parses it for us.
if anyone cared to read the antitrust complaints.
Of course I trust Zuckerberg... (Score:2)
Why wouldn't I trust an arrogant lying, perverted weasel with delusions of gradeur?
TOS are shifting sands (Score:2)