Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 441 posts

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#191

Post by yoghurt »

saiya-jin wrote: post #90
smoyer wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read that blog post when the acquisition was announced ... And laughed! While it feels like the (then) WhatsApp CEO was sincere, did anyone really believe that Zuckerberg would be a hands-off owner? Or that his public-only data content ideas wouldn't become dominant? I'll agree that I think this move contradicts his blog post but I also don't think the purchased entity gets to set the terms after agreeing to be bou…

you wouldn't pay 2 billion for messaging app with few hundred millions of users that is without ads and doesn't make any money to be philanthropic about it, would you (or anybody else)

Well, they could've actually started charging for the service. $1 a year was more than reasonable for me.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#192

Post by BostX »

thecatspaw wrote: post #8
mkagenius wrote: post #6

There is one funny one: http://www.ndtv.com/blog/why-i-took-whatsapp-to-court-by-a-1...

"please turn off your adblocker" yeah, no thanks. Do you have another link?

Hit 'M-x eww http://www.ndtv.com/blog/...' in emacs and off you go :-)

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#193

Post by Klathmon »

alkonaut wrote: post #79
chii wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Something on the lines of don't collect any data, besides name, password, email address. This information can never be sold. Would you then pay for the services in full that you now could use for free?

> Would you then pay for the services in full that you now could use for free? I don't use them free, I pay with my information. I just don't know exactly how much I'm paying. I'm happy to pay in either form, as long as I know exactly what I'm paying.

This I could get behind. Make legislation that forces a company to disclose the information they collect in an explicit way.

As a consumer I'd also like a way to force my data to be deleted, and be notified if my data is being sold or transferred by an acquisition or something, but I'm not sure how that would work.

What I don't want is not having the ability to "pay with data". I don't want to subscribe to everything out there, and paywalls threaten the web as we know it. Plus there are times where I want to be tracked. If a company has info on how I use the product, they can improve it for me.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#194

Post by veddox »

briandear wrote: post #158
retox wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that the German people generally are very wary of data being moved around and collected 'unnecessarily'. I think a ploy like this would only backfire on FB.

And oddly, Germany requires to to declare your religion to the government. So I guess the question would be: what is considered necessary? If Facebook needs data to offer a free service, that seems necessary unless Facebook employees are volunteers and servers run on kitten sneezes and rainbows.

> And oddly, Germany requires to to declare your religion to the government.

I trust my government with my data (well, mostly) because if it abuses that trust, I know that I and my fellow citizens can vote it out of power. We have no such control over FB.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#195

Post by 0xmohit »

bikamonki wrote: post #147

You can go get an off-contract sim card, use it on a clean Android, create a fake gmail account in order to download and install Whatsapp. Now you make connections (you add family and friends to your contacts) and start communicating. By now both FB and Google know who you are simply b/c other people in your network, not concerned with privacy, have you saved on their contacts list, pressumably under your first and l…

> You can go get an off-contract sim card, use it on a clean Android

The moment you connect to your WiFi, Google gets the SSID and can relate other devices using it. Possibly (?) the SSID is also known to WhatsApp.

Does it really help much?

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#196

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

smokeyj wrote: post #183
technofiend wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>THERE IS NO ESCAPE. Unless you do what they themselves say you should do if you do not agree with the terms: don't use their services. Or as so many others have called out in the thread - you get legislative relief.

But if you have a database of the entire population and can correlate relationships in data - what exactly does this legislation look like? "Ok Zuck, here's all my data. But don't run a `SELECT *` because that would violate my privacy". The solution here is obviously open-source and protocol based mediums. Proprietary social networks exist to extract data and sell ads. But let's ignore that and give politicians more…

> But if you have a database of the entire population and can correlate relationships in data - what exactly does this legislation look like? "Ok Zuck, here's all my data. But don't run a `SELECT *` because that would violate my privacy".

Yes, there are laws restricting how and when data can be processed.

That someone has the ability to do something bad does not mean they cannot be restricted from doing it by the law.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#197

Post by Nursie »

smokeyj wrote: post #183
technofiend wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>THERE IS NO ESCAPE. Unless you do what they themselves say you should do if you do not agree with the terms: don't use their services. Or as so many others have called out in the thread - you get legislative relief.

But if you have a database of the entire population and can correlate relationships in data - what exactly does this legislation look like? "Ok Zuck, here's all my data. But don't run a `SELECT *` because that would violate my privacy". The solution here is obviously open-source and protocol based mediums. Proprietary social networks exist to extract data and sell ads. But let's ignore that and give politicians more…

Yes, just because you can do something with someone's data doesn't mean you should be able to do so.

That this sort of restriction is largely missing from US data laws is one reason we see so much fuss about data centre locations and 'safe harbour' provisions.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#198

Post by fauigerzigerk »

forgottenpass wrote: post #97
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you put trade in organs in the same basket as trade in conclusions from personal data, then I have to wonder what you put in the other basket, the one where consenting adults are allowed to freely enter into agreements. If you are criticising that people are not willingly and knowingly entering into agreements with Facebook or Google, that is another debate. Yes I think there should be the utmost level of transpar…

consenting adults are allowed to freely enter into agreements. I accept as a fact of modern life, that I unless I want to go be a hermit in the woods, I'll find myself entering into many contracts of adhesion that go against my ideals. And that as much as I try to limit this (not using facebook or whatsapp) I can't actually escape them entirely. It is disingenuous to think that either (a) people fully understand and…

I don't deny these issues at all. That's why I said regulating to make sure people understand what they agree to is fine. I also think people need to be able to change their mind. There are a lot of specific things that I think are unacceptable (such as employers or landlords demanding access to facebook accounts). As I said, I'm not against all regulation.

But if most people are in fact fine with granting access to their personal data in exchange for services then peer pressure on the rest of us who refuse the deal cannot be justification enough to ban the entire business model.

I'm in the same boat as you. I refuse to use Facebook.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#199

Post by s3r3nity »

hiisukun wrote: post #15

Regardless of how this ends up working or being decided, I'm very happy to see such discussion occurring. The large scale collection of data on users has benefits both nominally 'good' and 'evil' - from app UX to advertising profits. But equally interesting are the potential drawbacks involving privacy concerns, and lack of user awareness. It is this last point that I find best remedied by articles like this appearin…

This is probably nitpicky, but I'm not sure I buy this idea that "advertising profits" are "evil" - last I checked I happily use a Facebook account and all its features, built by extremely hard-working and intelligent engineers, without paying a dime. Not to mention the fact that I don't want to pay, and some people just can't.

Re: Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

#200

Post by Siimteller »

mtgx wrote: post #135
FabHK wrote: post #130

Can everyone just please install Wire [1]: * free, * end-to-end encrypted * text and voice chat * with pictures and group chat and what have you, * using the Signal/OpenWhisper protocol, * with desktop and web clients, * open source (GPLv3, and on github [2]), * signup with phone number or email, * based in Switzerland, * what else can you ask for? Signal itself of course is pretty good, secure (recommended by Ed Sno…

Tried to use Wire recently. On both the "native" app and the web one, it takes from 2-5 seconds for my message to appear in the window. I wanted to use it instead of Hangouts, but I can't if it's 3x slower. They need to do something about it, and they need to do it soon. This has happened since they launched the desktop client, but at first I thought I'd just give them sometime to fix the initial bugs. But it's still…

Give it another try in a day or two (we're close to a small performance release). Browser based encryption has performance issues but at least now we're showing the sent message immediately (in grey while it's sending, in black when sent).
Post reply on HN