WhatsApp has removed answer to “how do I choose not to share data with FB” • Hacker News Board

Re: WhatsApp has removed answer to “how do I choose not to share data with FB”

#161

Post by PennRobotics » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 6:07 PM UTC

hornokpleas wrote: post #101

PennRobotics wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I chuckled when our daycare had a lengthy discussion about data privacy and, twenty minutes later, asked every parent to join the WA group.

In the Whatsapp group, you don't have to share anything about yourself or your child that you don't want to. The daycare might only post very generic info about opening times, events, etc, or it might be one used only for parents to communicate among themselves, at their option. Facebook know who is in the group and what they post but none of it is necessarily confidential information. On the other hand, the daycare…

The fact that the bar for data privacy should be very high for the daycare shouldn't diminish the need for data privacy in the daycare-recommended parent group.

I've broken contact with a reasonably tech-savvy part of my family. I have to decide between being informed about current events and hoping the next Meta leak doesn't have my full name, number, hometown, and possibly group memberships.

Re: WhatsApp has removed answer to “how do I choose not to share data with FB”

#162

Post by theshrike79 » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 9:03 PM UTC

esarbe wrote: post #156

theshrike79 wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad tools for moderating large channels, no bot support.

I don't know about the moderation tools for large channels, but bots should be possible: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli

Well bots are "possible" even for WhatsApp, that doesn't mean they are actually supported.

Having to use patched libraries and burner phones for SMS verification isn't really something I want to get into =)

Compared to Telegram and Discord where basic bots aren't a lot more than a fancy curl call, this is just bonkers.

Re: WhatsApp has removed answer to “how do I choose not to share data with FB”

#163

Post by baby » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 9:08 PM UTC

philliphaydon wrote: post #62

baby wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whatsapp is more secure

What's App is not secure.

Wow, lots of FUD here. Well, keep downvoting and telling people to install a messaging app without end-to-end encryption if you want. Doesn't make you right.

Re: WhatsApp has removed answer to “how do I choose not to share data with FB”

#164

Post by endofreach » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 10:12 PM UTC

toast0 wrote: post #17

I worked at WhatsApp between 2011 and 2019. This FAQ had very specific instructions for how to opt out of sharing that were only available for a limited amount of time. The FAQ serves as documentation of the product and there's no need to keep online specific instructions that can no longer be followed. In order to opt out, you needed to have an existing account and take specific actions around the time you agreed to…

I wonder: what did you and your team do most of the time? I mean there haven‘t been too many crazy new features. How was privacy handled in the first few years?

Re: WhatsApp has removed answer to “how do I choose not to share data with FB”

#165

Post by xwdv » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 10:43 PM UTC

Titan2189 wrote: post #6

xwdv wrote: post #3

This was a canary, it’s over now all your data will be shared with the FBI for sure.

Funny - I also read the headline as "FBI" not FB as in Facebook

It was FBI.

Re: WhatsApp has removed answer to “how do I choose not to share data with FB”

#166

Post by littlestymaar » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 10:59 PM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #64

littlestymaar wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Earlier this year, when the change was announced and the media talked about it, I saw a ton of people starting to use signal (non-tech neighbours, my plumber, headhunters I still have in my contact list, etc). At this point I asked my mother to install it and to my surprise a lot of her friends where actually on Signal. It's still not the majority but at this point there is a significant user base for signal, much mo…

But are those people still using it? I saw a lot of those messages too around that time but since then most of them have moved back to WhatsApp as most of their contacts are still there.

What does “move back” means? Almost nobody uninstalled Whatsapp (even I use it frequently) or stopped using it. But they have installed Signal and can now be reached this way. My mom uses it to chat with her friends who have it, and use Whatsapp for the rest. I don't know anyone who has actively uninstalled Signal so far, so I use it by default to connect with them. If you compare this to emails, none of my friends ever bothered to create a non gmail address, so I'm stuck with Google reading all my personal communication with nothing I can do. It used to be the same[1] for Whatsapp, but no more. This is a small victory, but a clear victory nonetheless.

[1]: not exactly the same, because AFAIK Whatsapp is E2E encrypted, but Facebook still has access to all the metadata, which are way more that what I want them to have.

Re: WhatsApp has removed answer to “how do I choose not to share data with FB”

#167

Post by _carbyau_ » Mon, Dec 06, 2021, 11:07 PM UTC

GekkePrutser wrote: post #66

_carbyau_ wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A decentralised, trustless future perhaps?" I think we need a DNS-like service that simply hold small encrypted blobs, just big enough to contain an IPv6 address. When you "add" someone to your list of contacts, you are giving them the key to decrypt the blob that you update with your IP.(Complications ahoy here but this is the basic idea.) That way, people can message your phone/computer-of-choice direct with whate…

There's so many issues with this. The biggest being the need to be online at the same time. But other issues: using it from multiple devices? Using it from different locations? Maybe it'll work with a tor hidden service or something because at least that stays the same (I think some chat apps already so that)

The part here is a "DNS for all" approach.

Once you have that, everyone can run their own hosting. Everyone could have their own Matrix server, or whatever flavour of messaging you want.

Re: WhatsApp has removed answer to “how do I choose not to share data with FB”

#168

Post by toast0 » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 12:52 AM UTC

endofreach wrote: post #164

toast0 wrote: post #17

I worked at WhatsApp between 2011 and 2019. This FAQ had very specific instructions for how to opt out of sharing that were only available for a limited amount of time. The FAQ serves as documentation of the product and there's no need to keep online specific instructions that can no longer be followed. In order to opt out, you needed to have an existing account and take specific actions around the time you agreed to…

I wonder: what did you and your team do most of the time? I mean there haven‘t been too many crazy new features. How was privacy handled in the first few years?

My official work was server side verification. Sending codes to people via SMS and Voice. So that's evaluating new SMS/voice providers, checking that the current ones are working, tracking down issues, working with carriers to setup direct SMPP connections for SMS (which thankfully got offloaded to the FB Mobile Partner team), supporting carrier deals. Figuring out how to make it as easy as possible for users to input codes (including working to make the messages readable for platform APIs that allow automatic/assisted code entry)

But even though that's a lot of things and is super important, most days there wasn't urgent work on that, and I'm pretty good at debugging weird stuff, so I debugged a lot of weird stuff. When you have millions (or billions) of users, 'one in a million' stuff happens a lot.

Diagnosing bugs in FreeBSD and fixing them (or convincing upstream to fix them), diagnosing bugs in client platforms and finding workarounds (also trying to get them fixed, but it's hard to get a lot of movement even when bugs are general and just nobody else diagnosed it), diagnosing bugs in ISP networks and finding workarounds (almost nobody follows through on email to whois contacts, even if you're sending from @whatsapp.com), diagnosing issues in our hosting provider's network and convincing them to fix it, etc. If I had stayed longer, I'd have probably started diagnosing bugs in the FB infra and Linux, but I more or less left when we were almost done with our FreeBSD hosts and it took a while to wind down everything, so it was a good transition point to more or less not touch the service where it was running on FB.

In terms of privacy, I'm not going to say much. I think it's fair to say our goal was to only have the necessary private information to provide service. Messages aren't kept on the server beyond delivery, have a limited time frame waiting for delivery, address book is numbers only, no names, etc. Signal certainly stores less information on the server than WhatsApp. You can certainly read about our many failures (no client to server encryption, then poor encryption, and eventually good encryption) among other well reported issues. End to End Encryption took a long time to develop and deploy, but it sets a bar that hopefully other providers will meet (or exceed).

Re: WhatsApp has removed answer to “how do I choose not to share data with FB”

#169

Post by BLKNSLVR » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 12:53 AM UTC

EMM_386 wrote: post #148

BLKNSLVR wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was referring to a potential way that messaging could avoid the ongoing pendulum between small, independent and as-yet un-tainted by snooping platforms and the large, popular, privacy invasions they eventually turn into because of their centralised control. I wholeheartedly do not believe in making aircraft safety a democratic process. Horses for courses. Winston Churchill's quote: “…democracy is the worst form of…

> I wholeheartedly do not believe in making aircraft safety a democratic process. But if I read you correctly ("society's ability to change politics") ... this is how the US got things like January 6th. It's completely destabilizing for a functioning democracy when relatively small groups of like-minded people can coordinate over private channels and rally themselves into something crazy. The reason politics "works"…

> I am actually in favor of E2E encrypted chats and the like. But we need to keep politics out in the light of day.

That aligns with my position. I fundamentally believe in the necessity of transparency in politics. What I don't believe in is the the necessity of government / law enforcement snooping on E2E encrypted chats.

I don't want back-channel politics, I want back-channel private conversations amongst the citizenry. If this enables some back-channel politics then that's a price I believe is worth paying partially due to the fact that the end results of political decisions and actions are, by necessity, public.

Politicians should, by policy, have their political communications recorded (not made public, but archived "just in case") since they're working for the public. Those who avoid such scrutiny should be named and shamed if it can be proven. Utopian, I'm aware.

Re: WhatsApp has removed answer to “how do I choose not to share data with FB”

#170

Post by BLKNSLVR » Tue, Dec 07, 2021, 1:14 AM UTC

m000 wrote: post #139

DeathArrow wrote: post #104

Instead of arguing how bad WhatsApp is in terms of privacy, people would be better off by switching to more privacy respecting alternatives such as Telegram or Signal. I know it's hard to switch if most of your friends are on WhatsApp, but you can talk to them and switch together.

I had started peddling Signal to my family members. Then Signal shot themselves in the foot by killing the SMS import functionality. SMS integration was the killer feature of Signal for bringing more people on board and get to a critical mass of users, where uninstalling WhatsApp would be a a viable option. It seems that you can still get the SMS import by first installing an old version that supported it and then up…

I don't understand normal peoples obsession with keeping their old SMS messages. I get that there are some cherished memories from loved ones living or passed, but, take a screenshot to be saved to the 'cloud'. And I'm even text-heavy when it comes to communication, but there are no conversations I have over SMS that are worth "re-living the moment" (in my experience). I've got Signal configured to delete any messages older than 3 months. Long-term important information isn't for SMS.

I asked my son's friends if they had each other's phone numbers in case the 'party' got split up and needed to arrange to meet at a time/landmark. They pretty much all said "we've got each others insta". Today's yoof don't SMS, so SMS integration has a decreasing lifespan.

People's lives are so busy (I know this because that's what everyone says), who's scrolling back through their SMS conversations, and why?