If only there existed a peer to peer solution that doesn't require trusting a central host
Bitmessage?
“How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
141–150 of 319 posts
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#142It's kind of pointless, Facebook owns Whatsapp so they have all that info anyway. 'The Facebook family of companies will still receive and use this information for other purposes such as improving infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities.'
I don't mind Facebook having access to my mobile number. I mind them mining that data and then pushing advertising to me when they said before that they _wouldn't_ do this.
Quote from the announcement (https://blog.whatsapp.com/499/Facebook):
> And you can still count on absolutely no ads interrupting your communication. There would have been no partnership between our two companies if we had to compromise on the core principles that will always define our company, our vision and our product.
Today's announcement (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-37184651):
> The updated privacy policy also paves the way for businesses to send messages to WhatsApp users.
Facebook has used their market dominance to restrict competition so we can't avoid advertising. I'm not normally one to get angry and start waving pitchforks, but for me, this is clearly an abuse of their monopoly.
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most don't like hearing this: if you don't want your personal information to be shared, don't use these "social media" tools. I suspect that you'd be familiar with LinkedIn dark patterns [0] too. [0] https://medium.com/@danrschlosser/linkedin-dark-patterns-3ae...
It's not that simple. There are many many ways that your information can end up being referenced in an identity graph and be discoverable by Facebook that don't involve signing up for Facebook at all. It's more - don't sign into a public wifi network, don't hand over your email address at a checkout, don't sign up for a store card.. oh, and don't sign up for Facebook either. Not just that, but even if your number is…
> There are many many ways that your information can end up being referenced in an identity graph and be discoverable by Facebook
Of course, it's not simple.
Additional measure might include using browser extensions like Ghostery, uBlock origin.
I know people find it hard to do, but avoid using Google search. Use Duckduckgo instead.
Block ads. Some sites refuse to load up for that reason. I'm ok giving those a pass :)
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#144that's not a serious question right? why you are even using anything Fb touches/owns/operates is the real issue
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#145It's kind of pointless, Facebook owns Whatsapp so they have all that info anyway. 'The Facebook family of companies will still receive and use this information for other purposes such as improving infrastructure and delivery systems, understanding how our services or theirs are used, securing systems, and fighting spam, abuse, or infringement activities.'
Exactly. Moreover, a look at the permissions required by Facebook app would reveal how much information it collects about you: Device & app history retrieve running apps Identity find accounts on the device add or remove accounts read your own contact card Calendar read calendar events plus confidential information add or modify calendar events and send email to guests without owners' knowledge Contacts find accounts…
Just out of curiosity, are there any permissions they don't try to get?
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#146I'm trying to find more info about https://wire.com They would seem to be doing all the right things, such as OTR and not rolling their own protocols, but I've only been able to find a couple of opinions and nothing concrete. The fact that they've made effort to open source it and are letting people write their own clients for it is encouraging, but not proof that it's a solid system.
I discovered Wire a few months ago and have been impressed with its feature set. While Wire states that it is using axolotl ratchet, note that it is not the same as the Signal protocol used by Signal. Apparently Wire took the axolotl ratchet (the one Signal started with) and created a custom version for its own use. Moxie stated something of this sort in a comment recently on HN. There have also been some conflicts b…
Thanks for the response.
My sense from the information is that the protocols are extremely similar, the implementation is the primary difference.
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#147This is an incredibly ugly dark pattern. The 'share information with Facebook' nugget is hidden behind a toggle at the bottom of the screen, and will be guaranteed to be missed by the 99% of users who just want to talk to their friends. Then, once you've agreed to the terms and conditions, you've got a completely arbitrary 30 days to read an online article which tells you what you've signed up for before WhatsApp is…
Most don't like hearing this: if you don't want your personal information to be shared, don't use these "social media" tools. I suspect that you'd be familiar with LinkedIn dark patterns [0] too. [0] https://medium.com/@danrschlosser/linkedin-dark-patterns-3ae...
"Don't use these tools if you value privacy" is not that far off from "If you have nothing to hide, why are you afraid of surveillance?"
An observed life is not a free life. Many people have to use social media to communicate with family, work associates, etc... In many cases, facebook messaging has replaced methods of communication that did not rely on the content or metadata of messages for profit.
All that really matters is if this was legit and FB assumed people would have no problem with it then they would not have hidden it.
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding negative social consequences ... Today I switched phones and wanted to transfer my Whatsapp contacts to the new phone. What Whatsapp did: Somehow they managed to delete me from each and every group I had been in, deleted every chat and I cannot access this anymore. I already had to explain to three friends why I left our group as they were furious because we had talked about important things in those groups…
That's strange. You can backup WhatsApp data at least on iOS.
Well... I did, at least I thought so. I had it on "weekly" but am not able to recover it. Doesn't matter, just wanted to make the point that I'm in favor of adapting a new messaging up not as widely used as WhatsApp.
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding negative social consequences ... Today I switched phones and wanted to transfer my Whatsapp contacts to the new phone. What Whatsapp did: Somehow they managed to delete me from each and every group I had been in, deleted every chat and I cannot access this anymore. I already had to explain to three friends why I left our group as they were furious because we had talked about important things in those groups…
> deleted every chat Whatsapp never stores the chat history anywhere. All conversations are encrypted end to end.
False, you can store it locally and/or in the cloud. End-to-end my ass.
Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's ironic; that albeit they started with an open federation protocol they don't federate and are essentially a proprietary service.
XMPP isn't an "open federation protocol" it's just a protocol that includes a means to federate; doing so is a matter of server preference. It would be great if more large services federated, but I'd rather have them use XMPP and not federate than build more custom protocols and not use XMPP at all so that I can't write a third party client for them. My point is that being based on XMPP is still a good thing, regardl…
The whole point of XMPP is interoperability, so saying some proprietary service uses it internally is useless for the rest of the world without interoperability.
Can you connect with third party clients? Can they federate? Are they contributing to the protocol? No.
So what's good about it?