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WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

reuters.com

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Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#141

Post by freeflight »

Barrin92 wrote: post #127
mtgx wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't WhatsApp used to charge $1 per year to people in the early days?

Not sure if that was global but I did pay a Euro for it yep

Yes, it was global, it was how they financed their operation until Facebook bought them [0].

I wish they would still offer this as an option, tho I'd probably be skeptical of Facebook actually holding up their end of the deal and not tracking people who pay for WhatsApp.

[0] https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/04091...

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#142

Post by lucb1e »

soziawa wrote: post #7
gboudrias wrote: post #2

> “The only way to refuse the data transfer for “business intelligence” purpose is to uninstall the application,” the CNIL said in a statement. I mean, Facebook et al are a nightmare, but doesn't this statement apply to almost every app? Nevertheless, I'm sure Facebook is pretty annoyed right now, seeing as their main business goal seems to be "hoard all the data".

Well with WhatsApp being so popular in Europe it is almost impossible to uninstall it.

I installed WhatsApp two months ago for the chat group of our class, and intend to uninstall it by June again when this study is over.

On Telegram I have at least twenty chats active daily (people and several groups, and an HN bot). Everyone I want to talk to, except for that one class-wide group, is on Telegram. Even the people I do projects with in class have Telegram (I feel like there's a correlation to be drawn...), just not everybody had it so the class-wide group turned into a WhatsApp group and I had to acquiesce.

It's not impossible to uninstall. I hear this sentiment from most people, and most people are surprised I can live without WhatsApp. I am surprised they're surprised: it's not a bother at all. Almost everybody that I wanted to talk to had Telegram already anyway, and the three or so others installed it (I mean, if you're selling your soul anyway, you might as well install another...). Even some of the IRC-based groups have bridges to Telegram (via bots that forward things in between), though I still run a bouncer so IRC would be no issue.

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#143

Post by hartator »

shakna wrote: post #120
hartator wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am glad as an US company we don't have to comply to the dumb EU cookie laws. Yeah, we know every websites in the world uses cookies. Don't need a modal everywhere.

Common confusion over the cookie law. * It was never about all cookies. It was about 3rd party cookies. * An agreement was only necessary if you were transferring a user's private data to a 3rd party. It was a huge privacy leak. The EU tried to shut it down, so the world's corporations decided to keep doing what they were doing without changing a thing, whilst mocking cookies, and by proxy, the user's whose data they…

Every websites use Google Analytics - or another third part analytics - and therefore has to display the modal. This law is just a waste of everything.

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#144

Post by freeflight »

djsumdog wrote: post #77
masklinn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If one newspaper acquired another, couldn't the parent then market to the subsidiary's subscribers even if they continued to operate separately? The parent now owns everything anyway. Not in France, personal data is collected with a specified purpose (and bullshit/overly broad "purpose" can get you sued), using said data for other purposes is illegal. You (as a company) never own personal data per-se, you are lent…

I wonder if this means EU users get less creepy specific advertising. I run uBlockOrigin so I don't see many ads, but I've heard cases of Facebook/Adobe/Google algorithms being so good that people see ads for things they've never looked up online, yet talked about out loud (leading many to believe Facebook/Instagram are capturing microphone data). As a side not, this gets into the whole "Right to be Forgotten" which…

Not really, as an EU users, also using uBlockOrigin, I still get these creepy "follow you around after reading your mind" ads.

I don't think that's something they can easily disable by region without breaking way too many things.

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#145

Post by hartator »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #44
hartator wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am glad as an US company we don't have to comply to the dumb EU cookie laws. Yeah, we know every websites in the world uses cookies. Don't need a modal everywhere.

Bad news friend. You have to comply with GDPR if any of your users are in the EU, even if they were originally not in the EU when they signed up. Your user merely needs to be a EU resident. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Data_Protection_Regula... --- The regulation applies if the data controller (an organization that collects data from EU residents) or processor (an organization that processes data on behalf o…

If you don't have an organization in EU, they can't sue you in the U.S. because it's allowed here. It's like the U.S. trying to sue local Amsterdam pot shop because they sell drugs to U.S. residents.

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#146

Post by DannyBee »

theptip wrote: post #125
endisukaj wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not much they can do against tech behemoths based in the US though. They can stop them from gathering EU citizen data, or at least approve laws that try to stop them but who knows what is really happening behind the scenes.

As the article says, under GDPR (coming in mid-2018) they will be able to fine 4% of global revenue, or 20m EUR, whichever is larger [1]. I'm not certain that this particular case is covered by the GDPR, but if it is, then that will compel action. If Facebook declines to pay these fines, then presumably their execs would be arrested if they ever travelled anywhere in the EU. While FB can claim that it “is only subjec…

Or you'll see FB/others decide the EU isn't worth it over time.

It's interesting how many people here believe that there is no other possibility other than "we get what we want to happen".

Your faith is, IMHO, misplaced. There are many cases in history where other companies decided it wasn't worth the cost of doing business in certain countries.

Or they just successfully coopted the governments!

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#147

Post by Tomte »

andrewaylett wrote: post #87
pdpi wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For a contract to be binding, you need consideration[1] from both parties. A contract where you give me something for nothing is not binding, we both need to be giving each other _something_. That something need not be money: A contract saying that you agree to give me your house if I give you my car would qualify. Google and Facebook extract enough value from targeting ads based on the personal information we agree…

That still depends on the jurisdiction: Scotland, for example, does allow for contracts without consideration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_contract_law

Same in Germany: you can contract to gift something.

Of course, German contract law is very strange and alien to every other legal tradition (except Japan, I think, and that‘s only because they modeled their civil law on ours).

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#148

Post by freeflight »

david-s wrote: post #104
djsumdog wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this means EU users get less creepy specific advertising. I run uBlockOrigin so I don't see many ads, but I've heard cases of Facebook/Adobe/Google algorithms being so good that people see ads for things they've never looked up online, yet talked about out loud (leading many to believe Facebook/Instagram are capturing microphone data). As a side not, this gets into the whole "Right to be Forgotten" which…

In what fashion can it be used as a form of censorship?

I've already seen this happen with commercial spammers in Germany. For a while I got a ton of really annoying spam, advertising for big name brands, but organized by some spam racket with no way to opt out and registered in some foreign country.

Some Googling led me to the trial of some German woman who was quite notorious among the anti-scammer community for running several spam rackets. People would spend a lot of time figuring out her connections between different font companies, data brokers, and whatnot.

Until one day Googling her name wouldn't give any results at all; Couldn't look up any addresses anymore, couldn't look up company registers with her name anymore, it all just came up blank with a notification on the bottom of the search results, informing me that Google removed some results due to the EU right to be forgotten.

It's very likely this woman is still running a very profitable spamming business with a side-business of selling data caches. Sure, one could argue that it's actually government agencies job to handle something like that, but these agencies also depend on search results, especially with something as obscure as the spam industry.

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#149

Post by cfelix »

djsumdog wrote: post #77
masklinn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If one newspaper acquired another, couldn't the parent then market to the subsidiary's subscribers even if they continued to operate separately? The parent now owns everything anyway. Not in France, personal data is collected with a specified purpose (and bullshit/overly broad "purpose" can get you sued), using said data for other purposes is illegal. You (as a company) never own personal data per-se, you are lent…

I wonder if this means EU users get less creepy specific advertising. I run uBlockOrigin so I don't see many ads, but I've heard cases of Facebook/Adobe/Google algorithms being so good that people see ads for things they've never looked up online, yet talked about out loud (leading many to believe Facebook/Instagram are capturing microphone data). As a side not, this gets into the whole "Right to be Forgotten" which…

I do believe they are capturing microphone data because I can't think of any other explanation for the japanese ads (not about japanese stuff but actually written in japanese) I saw when rewatching my old anime DVDs.

I was watching anime in a old TV without any internet connection and at the same time browsing reddit on my laptop. Things like this make me feel no guilt for using ad-blocks.

Re: WhatsApp told to stop sharing user data with Facebook by French authorities

#150

Post by lucb1e »

teekert wrote: post #97
paimpozhil wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram is even better, has a nice desktop client which doesn't really depend on the mobile . Whatsapp's web client is just an UI to the mobile app meaning you also need to have phone connected to internet always for it to work. Telegram is much more responsive compared to the Whatsapp.

Yes but: Not standard End-to-End and the E2E encryption that is in there is not as well tested. Also, the mobile phone-less use is great but it requires plain text messages to be stored on Telegram servers. I think Signal's (and WA's) solution is pretty elegant. For non-phone related use I'd go for Wire https://wire.com/en/ encryption wise.

> the E2E encryption that is in there is not as well tested

There's an open $200k bounty for years now. Some "expert in the field" (who just happens to work for not one but two competitors -- yes, I'm looking at you, /u/moxie) posted a blog post right afterwards, about a competition not being the same as a proper design / security audit, and that's correct. But I've seen people try and fail over the years: the crypto holds. Moxie and co would have loved to see it fall too much not to have had a stab at it, never mind the bounty, but apparently they failed.

I think the e2e in Telegram is solid. If you're really paranoid about some file in particular, you can always send an encrypted zip or GPG encrypt it -- I'd recommend that anyway, since otherwise your chat's encryption keys (which are in use all the time, thus quite easy to get at) also unlock that sensitive file.

> For non-phone related use I'd go for Wire https://wire.com/en/ encryption wise.

I would recommend Wire.com too. This needs more awareness, since it does everything we've ever wanted, has the protocol everyone seems to support, is open source, works on all popular platforms, etc. Except nobody uses it, so the network effect is not there :(

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