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

Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 247 posts

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#61

Post by developer93 »

denton-scratch wrote: post #19
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't speak for the entire Europe obviously, usage varies from country to country, but where I've been it's pretty well entrenched for bot social and business.

WhatsApp is widely used by UK ministers to communicate with potential donors, lobbyists and other politicians. I don't know why it's allowed; in-person meetings are supposed to have a civil servant present and taking notes. WhatsApp gets them off the FOI hook.

I thought it doesn't, the law just doesn't seem to be enforced properly?

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#62

Post by developer93 »

jszymborski wrote: post #39

Sounds like this is less about Signal/WA and more about them not archiving methods. They could in theory run _e.g._ `sigtop` every couple of months and encrypt it (e.g. age or veracrypt). It's a complicated workflow but I imagine they have a pipeline for emails that isnt much less complicated, but also isnt E2EE.

WhatsApp at least has the possibility to back up messages, maybe signal too.

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#63

Post by seanalltogether »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #5

Ha, in Europe WhatsApp is even used by doctors and teachers to discuss patient/student matters, and even some government offices use it. It's wild how entrenched it is in every aspects of society, from social to business. Goes to show you how far good UX, simplicity and ease of use can take you.

At least in the UK, group messaging over sms was always broken, and sending pictures still costs me extra money. The phone carriers brought it on themselves.

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#64

Post by bennyelv »

segmondy wrote: post #14

So long as the fine is affordable, they will keep using it. Folks in the Finance industry using these apps are doing so for a reason.

In my experience it's simply down to convenience rather than malice. You have all your colleagues phone numbers, you know that a whatsapp is going to fire a notification that will get noticed whereas an email may not.

Or that email will go to the "work phone" which isn't sitting on the sideboard somewhere rather than in the person's pocket.

That said, there aren't any banks that don't have a comprehensive employee training program on security and compliance, so "I didn't realise" isn't going to be a valid excuse.

That's not to say that there isn't any deliberately malicious use going on, but it's unlikely that malicious use would be uncovered.

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#66

Post by xhkkffbf »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #50
SilasX wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So ... you aren't obligated to preserve records of the conversation if the channel is "in person", then.

Right - or if it's over the phone.

What if I dictate into my phone and What's App sends it as text? Purely to save bandwidth of course.

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#67

Post by wpietri »

ativzzz wrote: post #44
wpietri wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Such a waste of time trying intently to regulate and control communication. It's not an overall waste of time, because the goal is to reduce the enormous wastes caused by fraud, crime, and other malfeasance. I know somebody who worked at a bank. The bank had a mandatory vacation policy: you had to be 100% gone for at least two solid weeks every year. When outsiders heard about this, they were often indignant. Who i…

Is this one of those cases where it ends up causing death by regulation? Take the pharmaceutical industry in the US. One reason it's so expensive for them to operate is the massive amount of rules and regulations that surround their work and cause them to hire tons more highly skilled personnel in order to meet those regulations just to get work done. Now all those rules exist because someone did something bad and th…

Is your contention that the pharmaceutical industry is dying? Or that it has insufficient lobbying power to push back against regulations that don't improve safety in proportion to their costs?

But to answer your direct question, I think the answer is a pretty clear no. Financial companies invest a ton in communications. If there's a buck to be made from improving their tools so that their employees can communicate faster, they'll get around to it eventually. They'll just do it with tools that provide the sort of proper records that they've been obliged to keep since forever.

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#68

Post by EGreg »

everybodyknows wrote: post #59
EGreg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Then explain this: https://newatlas.com/computers/facebook-not-secretly-listeni... And this: https://www.pcmag.com/news/facebook-app-caught-activating-ph... And this: https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-facebook-data-share-not... And of course this: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-facebook-undermines-p...

Buried in the Propublica piece (2021) is the ELI5 of the fundamental uncloaking mechanism: >WhatsApp reviewers gain access to private content when users hit the “report” button on the app, identifying a message as allegedly violating the platform’s terms of service. This forwards five messages — the allegedly offending one along with the four previous ones in the exchange ... This may not have much to do with the mor…

That’s not the point. The issue is whether Facebook has surreptitiously gotten data you don’t think they’d be getting, and get caught doing it. With regard to video audio and metadata the answer is YES. Will you now trust them with your “encrypted” conversation content?

Re: Banks hit with millions in fines for using Signal and WhatsApp

#69

Post by freetanga »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #50
SilasX wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So ... you aren't obligated to preserve records of the conversation if the channel is "in person", then.

Right - or if it's over the phone.

I um unsure about current status in the States, but in Europe all conversations with a client over the phone where you might discuss commercial terms need to be recorded. Banks just cover their backs, and for customer facing positions all phone calls, no matter if through landlines (or IP telephony) or cell are recorded, either by the PBX software or by the carrier.

Employees are reminded not to use these lines for personal reasons (imagine an employee using the phone line to discuss their health with their doctor, and the employer just recorded extremely sensitive information from an employee), but the alternative means a strong fine from the regulators (usually the local AML authority).

Post reply on HN