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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

#211

Post by juanmirocks »

raverbashing wrote: post #205
juanmirocks wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. I'm European, and I sure miss my perceived greater freedom and innovation of economical activities in the US. Things like having UBER banned for example in France or Germany completely throws me off. And in Germany you don't know yet what's living without cash and only with a credit card. And those damn cookie notices!! Because they show up in every page, everybo…

Last I heard, Uber works just fine in France > And in Germany you don't know yet what's living without cash and only with a credit card. That's on the Germans (especially Berliners), rest of Europe uses cards a lot more. And I'm glad the US finally took their head out of the sand and are using Chip Cards But yeah the cookie notice is pretty much useless (and I think it's been implemented badly by websites as well). N…

I live in Munich, Bavaria, and, to give an example, in most restaurants you will not be able to pay with a credit card. Having said that, you can pay once you reach a minimum amount with what they call an "EC-Karte", a sort of debit card.

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

#212

Post by cosarara97 »

cJ0th wrote: post #175
JepZ wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, I use XMPP+OMEMO for 90% of my messaging and Conversations (Android App) is superb. Sadly Chatsecure seems to be a little more demanding in terms of server support (requires some odd Push Notification extension) and the desktop clients need some more love too (I use Gajim and Pidgin so far). Overall, I feel much better than to use some data hungry WhatsApp or some walled garden Signal app. Yes, it is a litt…

> Yes, it is a little more complicated to setup, but in the end it works as good as the others And this is quite literally true. It really only is a little more complicated. This is not a handwaving statement. You don't need any technical know-how to get Conversations running. It's only the fingerprint thing you have to explain to people who are not tech-savvy. But if you hit the right tone they'll have no problem wi…

There is the issue of the account. Whatsapp and Telegram are free (signal too?) and require 0 setup. With Conversations, you either have to pay for a conversations.im account, or open your browser and register on another server. I certainly can't imagine my grandmother doing that.

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

#213

Post by PeterisP »

briandear wrote: post #136
vkou wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presumably if I bought WhatsApp, I would legally be allowed to query some database for someone's phone number if I so chose because I now own the database. It's not your data. It's your users' data. So no, you may own the database, but you do not own the data.

I don't understand how users own their own data. That doesn't make any sense. Where does that idea come from?

The legal concept is that despite having the data in your physical possession and control, you're not allowed to do whatever you want with it, and you have to ask the user's permission for many specific use cases.

This means that for a colloquial understanding of "owning data", you don't own it (since you can't do what you want) but they do (since they can limit the uses to what they want).

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

#214

Post by Parcissons »

Jdam wrote: post #151
RestlessMind wrote: post #99

EU is one of my best hopes when it comes to privacy and really wish they start going after tech behemoths. I have given up on US authorities doing anything to reign them in. And policies in other significant countries (eg. China) would be even worse for user privacy.

This is just protectionism at its finest. You better don’t think that would happen if FB was a french company. The industrial-governmental-complex is stronger in France than anywhere else in the western world.

Yeah, they are trying to pull a Volkswagen there.

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

#215

Post by chaosite »

hartator wrote: post #139
chaosite wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't even a law, it's an order. Don't want to comply? Don't accept users from that country. That's the reality of a multi-national...

After all this hypocrite talk about net neutrality, it's suddenly okay to block users based on their country?

What does net neutrality have to do that? That talk is about the role ISPs play on the Internet, and whether practices like zero-rating and shaping based on source and preferring your own services should be allowed.

Yes, if you want to provide services on the Internet and don't want to comply with the laws of some countries, then you have to make sure you don't provide services to those users.

You see it all the time in copyright related situations, where companies lack the rights to distribute something in certain countries -- so, Spotify doesn't work in every country, for example. Neither does Amazon Prime Video. Netflix has a different selection in each country it operates in, and is also not available in every country.

What's the difference?

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

#216

Post by bseow »

gradys wrote: post #134
RestlessMind wrote: post #99

EU is one of my best hopes when it comes to privacy and really wish they start going after tech behemoths. I have given up on US authorities doing anything to reign them in. And policies in other significant countries (eg. China) would be even worse for user privacy.

I'm torn on this. On the one hand, I agree, the EU legislates privacy to a degree that no other political entity does as far as I'm aware, but on the other hand, they often do so with poorly designed policies. As an example, I'd point to the cookie notices that appear on almost every major website, which must have absorbed, globally, many careers worth of man-hours to implement while offering virtually no real-world…

You will have to specify if you don't like the purpose of the law or the implementation. Because the implementation isn't really up to the EU. Google could implement a http header tomorrow that complied with the law (at least as much as a notice) and would act like other ways of accessing your browser (like web camera or location). The problem is everyone would turn off the tracking, which would affect their revenue.

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

#217

Post by wlesieutre »

tomcooks wrote: post #203
tomcooks wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cookie popup is terrible, I agree. Some pros: Being able to force social networks to provide me with a physical copy of my data is alone a reason to get an EU citizenship. I don't even use the social networks, i just demand my data every 3 months to FB, Tinder and Linkedin to punish them for being so aggressive in their spamming and tracking. Being safe from throttling, censorship and all the nice stuff that US I…

Ah also no roaming across countries and having aligned ALL phone producers on the micro USB phone charger standard have been really nice news

Is that slowing the uptake of USB-C with its standardized Power Delivery fast charging?

What does Google ship with Pixels? The same USB-C fast charger and USB-C cable, then toss in a micro-USB to USB-C adapter for regulatory compliance?

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

#218

Post by PeterisP »

hartator wrote: post #140
dguest wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the alternative? You comply with the laws in your country of choice?

Comply with the laws where you based at. Other countries can't enforce their laws just because you communicate with their residents.

Well, that's not true - they certainly can, and (as in this case) are going to, the EU GDPR restrictions on personal data privacy (starting from May 2018) will affect many, many non-EU companies, starting from the largest global ones.

Perhaps you meant to say that other countries shouldn't enforce their laws just because you communicate with their residents?

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

#219

Post by kodablah »

kenoph wrote: post #162
DannyBee wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Honestly, I believe that the market is big enough to make it worth it anyway. But if they decide to leave, that could be a win-win. "Worst" case scenario, some EU-based company replace them and becomes a tech giant. I mean, look at Yandex or VK in Russia. Facebook (the website) is not rocket science. As for Google, replacing it could take time, but in the long run it's good to destroy their monopoly in Europe.

> Honestly, I believe that the market is big enough to make it worth it anyway.

Not for some of us just starting our companies. "Worst" case scenario is smaller players that would otherwise play globally will now not play in the EU market.

I was told the other day, "don't worry about it if you don't have sensitive data." That misunderstands risk management. I have plenty of customer potential on this side of the pond, why even risk it until I am large and have saturated my pool? I plan on handling my data completely within the spirit of that law, I just don't want to risk it. Seems on risk alone, others will have to make the same decision as me. We're not losing out really (we can only grow so fast) but those in the EU that might want access to the global market, big or small, might be.

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

#220

Post by cJ0th »

cosarara97 wrote: post #212
cJ0th wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, it is a little more complicated to setup, but in the end it works as good as the others And this is quite literally true. It really only is a little more complicated. This is not a handwaving statement. You don't need any technical know-how to get Conversations running. It's only the fingerprint thing you have to explain to people who are not tech-savvy. But if you hit the right tone they'll have no problem wi…

There is the issue of the account. Whatsapp and Telegram are free (signal too?) and require 0 setup. With Conversations, you either have to pay for a conversations.im account, or open your browser and register on another server. I certainly can't imagine my grandmother doing that.

How is this any more difficult than signing up for a free e-mail address and then using an e-mail app on the phone?
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