How Whisper app tracks ‘anonymous’ users

Post by ssully » Thu, Oct 16, 2014, 11:21 PM UTC

secfirstmd wrote: post #19

moxie wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on your own comments here, it sounds like the reporting is entirely accurate. You're attempting to justify why you're tracking your users, but you're still tracking them. You've highlighted many of the hard problems in this space: how do you achieve anonymity and unlinkability while doing things like IP hiding, spam filtering, and relevance matching? The issue is that you haven't solved the problems, and are in…

Moxie, Nothing I like more than watching you destroy snake-oil companies endangering user privacy, like this one and also Telegraph etc. Let's hope TextSecure/Redphone/Signal when they merge into one brand will get the amount of users they really deserve. This stuff is never just about gossip in Washington DC, it's always about the bigger picture of people in Sudan, China, Russia etc who are led into a false sense of…

Post by secfirstmd » Thu, Oct 16, 2014, 11:31 PM UTC

ssully wrote: post #51

secfirstmd wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moxie, Nothing I like more than watching you destroy snake-oil companies endangering user privacy, like this one and also Telegraph etc. Let's hope TextSecure/Redphone/Signal when they merge into one brand will get the amount of users they really deserve. This stuff is never just about gossip in Washington DC, it's always about the bigger picture of people in Sudan, China, Russia etc who are led into a false sense of…

Do you have any links about Telegraph endangering user privacy? I had a friend try to get me to start using it. I haven't really had time yet to do a lot of research on it and would love some insight if they are fishy at all.

Post by ozy23378 » Thu, Oct 16, 2014, 11:41 PM UTC

r0h1n wrote: post #5

What amazes me is that all of this information came voluntarily from Whisper . > The Guardian visited the Whisper offices to consider the possibility of undertaking other journalistic projects with the company and sent two reporters last month to look in detail at how the app operates. At no stage during the visit were the journalists told they could not report on the information shared with them. What kind of a comp…

Post by blueMist » Fri, Oct 17, 2014, 1:37 AM UTC

hdevalence wrote: post #30

rubyrescue wrote: post #8

I'm the CTO of Whisper. This is really bad reporting. A few notes: 1. we use a legacy maxmind geoip database so we can put the whisper in a general location. that is so inaccurate as to be laughable. for instance, my current IP using our service says "USA", though I'm in Venice, CA. This is hardly a privacy violation, and it's really important for a bunch of reasons: a) The whisper needs to actually appear in the app…

Since you're here, care to comment on: > “He’s a guy that we’ll track for the rest of his life and he’ll have no idea we’ll be watching him,” the same Whisper executive said. Is that a quote that the Guardian invented from whole cloth, or is that how you see your users?

Post by kbart » Fri, Oct 17, 2014, 8:23 AM UTC

barnaby wrote: post #54

Aren't Open Source privacy apps more preferable? Shouldn't we all be talking about ChatSecure, Redphone, Textsecure, Mailvelope, Cryptocat, GPG, EnigMail, etc.? And about the companies that offer these programs as a service? While it's not a guarantee of privacy, open source does significantly increase the likelihood that invasions of privacy and security vulnerabilities can be discovered by enthusiasts and journalis…