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Setting the record straight

blog.whatsapp.com

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Re: Setting the record straight

#31

Post by mattlutze »

rurounijones wrote: post #25
mattlutze wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This jumped out at me as well. In his list, they don't-not collect A. my phone number, and B. my entire message history. Certainly he knows that our phone number is PII enough. It's trivial for someone with the means to tie a cell number back to a person, and only slightly less trivial to look at timestamps and cross-reference tower locations and messages to have a quality bit of intel. If he was truly about this "we…

and your phone number is PII that Facebook asks you to register with them! So...yea, not exactly anonymous.

I don't know that Facebook requires a phone number, but yes definitely anyone that has given it out has given them that direct link.

Re: Setting the record straight

#34

Post by rjzzleep »

provided you have whatsapp and facebook on your phone the following happens though.

1. they both know your mobile phone book.

2. they both know your imei

3. they both know your phone number(this doesn't have to be the same by the time you sign up for the other)

just no.1 is already enough to get an accurate estimate on who the person is. notice how they never said that they didn't log that information?

it's also very unlikely that they don't have access logs to their service, which usually includes ip's i.e. location, but for all we know they could be encoding carrier information in a couple of bytes during the transmission of the contact list.

edit: while the mobile ip's don't give you exact information, they still give you enough heuristics to overlap them with other services

Re: Setting the record straight

#35

Post by ridruejo »

camillomiller wrote: post #13

Facebook will use whatsapp for whatever purpose they see fit. A 19 billion acquisition is not a partnership. When that will happen deliberately, maybe a year from now, the founders will leave, maybe slamming the doors, and enjoy their riches for the years to come.

He seats on the board. This is not an acquihire.

Re: Setting the record straight

#36

Post by mschuster91 »

rjzzleep wrote: post #34

provided you have whatsapp and facebook on your phone the following happens though. 1. they both know your mobile phone book. 2. they both know your imei 3. they both know your phone number(this doesn't have to be the same by the time you sign up for the other) just no.1 is already enough to get an accurate estimate on who the person is. notice how they never said that they didn't log that information? it's also very…

> it's also very unlikely that they don't have access logs to their service, which usually includes ip's i.e. location.

In mobile data world, the norm is MASSIVE NAT. Thousands of users per IP (you can IIRC make 65535 distinct connections over a single NATd IP). Also, the connections are usually terminated in one (or fairly few) data centres, so the IP only tells you the country and the provider, nothing more.

Re: Setting the record straight

#38

Post by [deleted] »

mschuster91 wrote: post #36
rjzzleep wrote: post #34

provided you have whatsapp and facebook on your phone the following happens though. 1. they both know your mobile phone book. 2. they both know your imei 3. they both know your phone number(this doesn't have to be the same by the time you sign up for the other) just no.1 is already enough to get an accurate estimate on who the person is. notice how they never said that they didn't log that information? it's also very…

> it's also very unlikely that they don't have access logs to their service, which usually includes ip's i.e. location. In mobile data world, the norm is MASSIVE NAT. Thousands of users per IP (you can IIRC make 65535 distinct connections over a single NATd IP). Also, the connections are usually terminated in one (or fairly few) data centres, so the IP only tells you the country and the provider, nothing more.

[deleted]

Re: Setting the record straight

#40

Post by throwawayaway »

rjzzleep wrote: post #34

provided you have whatsapp and facebook on your phone the following happens though. 1. they both know your mobile phone book. 2. they both know your imei 3. they both know your phone number(this doesn't have to be the same by the time you sign up for the other) just no.1 is already enough to get an accurate estimate on who the person is. notice how they never said that they didn't log that information? it's also very…

If I had known for even a second that the reason whatsapp took so long to start up on my phone, was it uploading MY ENTIRE PHONEBOOK to their servers, I would never use it. The damage has been done, but I never will use it.

I don't understand how the whatsapp CEO can come out with a statement like this while presiding over a program that behaves like this.

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