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Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

privacyinternational.org

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Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#71

Post by DarkWiiPlayer »

zucker42 wrote: post #20
duxup wrote: post #2

This is one of my concerns ever since the first app asked for my contacts. You could be a mountain man and value your privacy.... but if you just know someone who uses tech you are exposed in any number of ways. In the US things like third-party doctrine have not aged well in the information age as just communicating with people can expose you in ways you can't ever control.

This is why I don't use WhatsApp despite the fact I know many people who use it. To use the app, you have to give access to your entire contacts list. Even if I'm okay with them having my information, I don't feel comfortable consenting for those in my contacts list who don't use WhatsApp.

> This is why I don't use WhatsApp despite the fact I know many people who use it. To use the app, you have to give access to your entire contacts list. Even if I'm okay with them having my information, I don't feel comfortable consenting for those in my contacts list who don't use WhatsApp.

Fun fact, that has technically been illegal for a while here in Germany. There's quite a few videos / articles on how "Using whatsapp is TECHNICALLY illegal". Of course, nobody really complains, so no legal action was ever taken against any user, but it's still a good excuse for me to say "I'm not installing that. It's illegal."

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#72

Post by DarkWiiPlayer »

bdcravens wrote: post #26
i_feel_great wrote: post #7

Spam it by labeling phone numbers with shit data and make it useless.

This isn’t a new app - the database is several years old, and is used by many millions. Not sure how you’d get enough numbers and junk entries in there to accomplish what you’re suggesting.

Enough people with enough bots could probably do it. Is it realistic? no. But possible? certainly yes.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#73

Post by kkarakk »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #40
mdani wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Use Twilio Proxy https://www.twilio.com/proxy

That's only "easy" for the HN crowd. Most people use second-line apps like Hushed, or the traditional method of getting a second line from your carrier.

The journalist in question here has access to an "opsec" team, seems like it would be their job to handle things like this and they dropped the ball

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#74

Post by mikedilger »

It seems absurd to me to consider data about a person to belong to that person. If I learn that Chloe is a reporter for The Inquirer, what law restricts me from telling somebody else? And if there is one, what else can I not say about her? Can I mention she is a brunette? Can I tell the story about going out for coffee, or am I violating her privacy by leaking the fact that she prefers coffee to tea? To get really ridiculous for a moment (brace yourself) does she have a property right on the region of my brain which holds any of this information about her? Clearly there is a fundamental incongruity with other basic social notions.

As a society we have most definitely moved in the direction that data about a person is somehow under their right to control: the right to privacy, the right to be forgotten, etc. We've subsequently run into numerous difficulties with this notion, such as the inability to warn our friends about bad actors, leading to different rules for "public people" versus "private people," arbitrary dividing lines, different rules for minors, different rules for individuals vs companies vs really really big companies, and a number of other abstruse rules about when or where you might be violating somebody's privacy, which seem to change significantly over the years and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction with no hope of ever settling down (because IMHO there is no rational obvious place for this to settle into).

Even if the laws were clear, universal and watertight, privacy is still fundamentally your problem. Laws will not control everybody else, and depending on everybody else to behave doesn't seem like a sane strategy for anybody. So you'd best keep your secrets to yourself and those you trust.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#75

Post by DarkWiiPlayer »

nutjob2 wrote: post #9

The problem here is that once you give out a number then it's public in some sense. The person you give it to can pass it on, even inadvertently. The smart thing to do is to have a public number and a private number. It makes no sense to call cabs with the same number you use to contact sources or whatever. This is easily done with dual sim phones and can be taken much further with Google Voice or other dial-in phone…

Or just divide your calls into confidentiality classes. Whoever added the journalists number to the app clearly didn't consider it much of an issue; so that probably was neither a very trustworthy nor particularly vulnerable contact.

Also didn't she tell the contact that maybe it'd be better if they didn't tell anyone she's a journalist? Sure, it's a pretty obvious thing, but I feel like in her situation, you'd make sure that they know, just in case, that it's a huge dickmove to make that sort of information public.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#76

Post by icebraining »

mwambua wrote: post #35
zucker42 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why I don't use WhatsApp despite the fact I know many people who use it. To use the app, you have to give access to your entire contacts list. Even if I'm okay with them having my information, I don't feel comfortable consenting for those in my contacts list who don't use WhatsApp.

You don't have to give the app access to your contacts... at least on iOS. That's what I do. It would be impossible to communicate with friends and family otherwise. I just have to put a little more effort into figuring out who's texting or calling me. The app also still shows me people's (self assigned) nicknames in group-chats. My only gripe is that I still have to give the app access to my photos. I wish there was…

Same in Android. I reluctantly keep Whatsapp installed, but don't give it access to my contacts.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#77

Post by DarkWiiPlayer »

Mirioron wrote: post #68
DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #64

> We reply to TrueCaller to suggest that: > - They advertise the unlisting option more clearl > - They send a SMS to any non-user whose number is entered to warn them someone is attempting to enter their number and ask them for consent. This would also be an opportunity to inform them about the unlisting option. I doubt anything less than that is even really legal in the EU right now. Essentially, if my phone number…

I'm often critical of GDPR, but stuff like this is why I think it's probably necessary to have.

GDPR is 100% necessary and fundamentally a good idea. It has a lot of problems that just show how incompetent politicians can get on a bad day, but that doesn't invalidate the core idea.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#78

Post by sosborn »

mikedilger wrote: post #74

It seems absurd to me to consider data about a person to belong to that person. If I learn that Chloe is a reporter for The Inquirer, what law restricts me from telling somebody else? And if there is one, what else can I not say about her? Can I mention she is a brunette? Can I tell the story about going out for coffee, or am I violating her privacy by leaking the fact that she prefers coffee to tea? To get really ri…

Does there have to be a law for something to be distasteful and ethically dubious?

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#79

Post by tty2300 »

mikedilger wrote: post #74

It seems absurd to me to consider data about a person to belong to that person. If I learn that Chloe is a reporter for The Inquirer, what law restricts me from telling somebody else? And if there is one, what else can I not say about her? Can I mention she is a brunette? Can I tell the story about going out for coffee, or am I violating her privacy by leaking the fact that she prefers coffee to tea? To get really ri…

New technology has opened up new possibilities far beyond what your word of mouth example has. Megacorps are sucking up data on a mass scale and using it for evil such as manipulating elections, tricking you in to buying stuff and reporting your every action to the government.

For this reason we need to think beyond the old ways of dealing with data.

Re: Betrayed by an app she had never heard of

#80

Post by DarkWiiPlayer »

iliketosleep wrote: post #8

This reminds me once again that the weakest link in the privacy chain today is the mobile phone number, especially since governments in many countries have forced people to link their number to a real ID. It's essentially become a ID number by proxy. However, in the case of the article, the reporter should know to inform her sources not to enter _any_ information linking to her real-world identity into their electron…

> However, in the case of the article, the reporter should know to inform her sources not to enter _any_ information linking to her real-world identity into their electronic devices.

Yeah, that had me kinda puzzled as well. Sure, the app seems like a terrible idea, but ultimately it was one of her contacts who put that information into it.

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