[Samurai]

Originally Posted by Jaggu

One thought I had was with an open-source code base, won't a platform like signal be an easier target for hackers and espionage folks lol??

It works both ways. It invites both white hats and black hats to have a look at the code. Black hats (bad guys) will study it to find a loophole, the white hats will study it to find and close the loophole. Basically, you get 1000s of unpaid experts take a look and propose fixes. It is priceless...

Keeping the code open also ensures that various stakeholders (governments, security companies) confirm there is no malicious code in the product. In fact, many governments and companies adopted Linux for the same reason.

Now opensource is used in practically every commercial products. The most famous cryptography library (openssl) is also opensource.

[whitewing]

If we use any of the platforms, they would know enough to identify us. We may switch to a VPN provider/use a different search engine etc to limit the exposure.


For someone like me who is not on FB/Insta/Twitter, switching to Signal has been a logical thing for some time. Drawback has been that there was a very limited set of souls to communicate with. That's changed thanks to Elon Musk's tweet, many WA groups I was in, have made the switch and the rest are discussing privacy for a change.


A great article on the topic:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoff...ivacy-backlash

[Thad E Ginathom]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Keeping the code open also ensures that various stakeholders (governments, security companies) confirm there is no malicious code in the product. In fact, many governments and companies adopted Linux for the same reason.

Tangentially, to those to whom this is so important that they have/employ the necessary skills to read the code, I guess they would have to be sure that the code they have is the code for the executables they use. Compile/build their own.

[msdivy]

Originally Posted by Hayek

I find that useful - if I get discount offers from ASICS shoes or accessories for my cars or resorts Is any to stay in, that is great.

While ads can help in making a decision or offering better deals, ads on Facebook has been used to,

1. Promote misinformation (showcase negative information on competitors)
2. Spead fake news (wrong information)
3. Sway perception (by 1 & 2 above)

to an extent that people who had resolved to vote for A have changed their vote to B based on misinformation on Facebook. This is done by Facebook by carefully creating ready-made segments for targeted advertising (segments on behavioral, social, demographic & other traits). Their WhatsApp data collection is in the quest to improve this targeting. Since these are ads, they are available to the highest bidder. Facebook has garnered immense soft power which I don't think even Facebook realizes. I think Facebook is the tiger the world is riding and is afraid to dismount. Actually, the world doesn't know what to do with Facebook.

[WorkingGuru]

My simple reason to slowly move away from WhatsApp is that I don't like the format of conversations. It's not like I want to evade anyone, but the design is just too limited & spoils nuances of communication. Very arbitrary of WA to not allow users to choose format of how they wish to communicate.

Ex. Archiving muted groups everyday is a pain! Why not let them move up in the archived section?

WA until recently didn't allow users to mute chats permanently.

One can't pin more than 3 chats! Why? Can't we have more than 3 important people/groups to stay actively in touch with!

Small Businesses cannot 100% depend on WhatsApp as they may flag the activity & permanently ban them from WhatsApp platform with no reason/support structure!

They've taken ages to make even basic changes in the format! Sheer indifference to what the consumer wants.

For the kind of world it is today & the ineffectiveness of laws , I'm guessing WA has set-up AI to read, harvest & analyse the so called "encrypted" chat messages.

Everyone saves contacts with a context to what that person does for them. WA would use that context & bank statements for the user profile.

The whole thing stinks of being against the small guy. Whether you're a small business or an individual, they've all the info needed to support a competitor who may simply have the money to advertise. Unhealthy competition.

Would you allow your competitors (your strongest rivals) know your data? Then why allow WhatsApp to do that!?

Atleast people are now getting a vague understanding of how free stuff can be largely harmful.

[padmrajravi]

I have tried a couple of times in the past to move away from Whatsapp and failed. The reason is that friends and folks refuse to move away and gets back to whatsapp itself after trying for a brief period. And that is understandable , because it does not make sense to stay at place where your friends are not available. So if at all this move happens, it has to be part of a world wide campaign. And to me the current campaign does not seem to be working. Since I still don't have most of my contacts on Signal or Telegram.

My primary reason to move away from Whatsapp is not privacy. It is the lack of open APIs for whatsapp. I think Whatsapp is the single reason that prevents the emergence of a new mobile operating system. Something like Debian or Ubuntu will never happen in mobile space because of whatsapp. If you value privacy, it is not the messaging apps that you should be going after, rather it should be Google and Android.

[kiku007]

Originally Posted by Samurai

Somewhere in the 90s, I was an young architect helping the sales team make technical proposals. The customer was a large conglomerate owning dozens of different businesses, including, telephone, mobile, credit card, insurance, internet service, email service, etc. The NDA expired long ago, and the business model discussed there is now the bread-n-butter of companies like FB. They wanted to combine the customer information from dozens of businesses into a single database, so that they can identify unique customers. Without that they were counting the same customer multiple times. For example, a single household was being counted as 9 different customers across their databases. I asked how would you know, since you don't have the integrated database. The customer replied that it was his house, and he and family used 9 different services of his company. The company treated the mobile phones, landline, credit card, car insurance, internet service all as different customer. The company could count 100 million customers, while the reality was... they didn't know. They could only guess, it could be 15-20 million only. So this was a big problem for their marketing team. How to promote new business to their own customer, while not knowing what they already use.

Interesting you mentioned that. In the early 2000s I worked on the Informatica/IBM products that did Household and Identity matching.

Links:
https://docs.informatica.com/data-in...lgorithms.html

https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledg...seholding.html

These were for Banks and an Automaker.

The Use case was pretty straightforward. The Banks wanted to know which of their customers shared a household and which products they already have so they could target them with relevant marketing. This included the identification of unique customer records since the same person could have different person records in the IT system for different products.

The Automaker wanted to know if vehicle ownership changed based on the service records. Person A in Address A bought the car in 2010 but Person B brought the car for service in 2015 but has the same address. Sure they are in the same household but if the address was different that would trigger a set of processes.

People don't realise the power of data mining.

[atnyia]

Lots of people here have resigned to the inevitability of lack of privacy. Truth to be told, having a mobile device itself takes your location privacy out of the picture. Having a smartphone has taken it to next level where 'smart assistants' are listening to all conversations we are having. Add to the overall digitalization of payments, travel, connected cars, fast tags, all these can very well lead to an Orwellian surveillance state.

However, I think the phrasing of the problem is wrong here at times. As we see, broomsticks of privacy information aren't the problem, not until they become a broomstick. So, as long as we have disconnected, localized databases (in the context of private information), we don't have much of a problem. That's the key difference between Team-BHP and Facebook, or what Whatsapp used to be. If someday, Team-BHP decides to handover/sell its user data to Facebook, that would be a problem for us, wouldn't it be?

A separate issue I see with social media overall is the kind of 'monoculture' it tends to enforce. The algorithms feed us similar kinds of contents, until all we see, is the same thing again and again. I think it has had a big role in the societal divide that we are witnessing. The same person is being considered as some comic book superhero (with masterstroke superpower) by some and evil dictator comparable to the worst of history by others; with nothing in between.

So, this is not just an 'ads' issue. It has deep, existential ramifications for the generation we are raising. Try taking a six-year-old off watching random youtube videos.

Personally, I am able to control Facebook with so little activity in past three that FB has revoked Marketplace access for me. Twitter has also been deactivated but can be browsed if needed. Team-BHP still remains a hobby as it is a good social group, not an all-encompassing online persona for me with photos, statuses, etc. In most ways, it still remains a traditional website with cookies.

The amount of mental relaxation which I have got, especially after quitting Twitter is indescribable. Even my sleep quality has improved. Surprisingly, it wasn't as hard for me. I still occasionally browse timelines of a selected few, without logging in. But, there is no way for Twitter to 'feed' me.

In the next step, Whatsapp was the last frontier where I was able to leave most 'hot politics' groups and used it for personal chats. As many people have joined Signal now, I am able to move most of my personal chats on Signal now. Whatsapp still remains a legacy for professional contacts/office/housing society conversations.

Overall I am still happy to control the things which I could.

[AZT]

Building up on what Samurai and Msdivy said, no one is immune to propaganda simply because it is a science of building a psychographic profile. There is a reason these companies pay billions of dollars to acquire other companies simply to get more data on you. Posting the worst bits about the company from an article below. The entire article is huge and I'd recommend reading all of it. Data Privacy sounds like a myth when you read this.

What is the Facebook data privacy scandal?

The Facebook data privacy scandal centers around the collection of personally identifiable information of "up to 87 million people" by the political consulting and strategic communication firm Cambridge Analytica. That company--and others--were able to gain access to personal data of Facebook users due to the confluence of a variety of factors, broadly including inadequate safeguards against companies engaging in data harvesting, little to no oversight of developers by Facebook, developer abuse of the Facebook API, and users agreeing to overly broad terms and conditions.

In the case of Cambridge Analytica, the company was able to harvest personally identifiable information through a personality quiz app called thisisyourdigitiallife, based on the OCEAN personality model. Information gathered via this app is useful in building a "psychographic" profile of users (the OCEAN acronym stands for openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism). Adding the app to your Facebook account to take the quiz gives the creator of the app access to profile information and user history for the user taking the quiz, as well as all of the friends that user has on Facebook. This data includes all of the items that users and their friends have liked on Facebook.

Researchers associated with Cambridge University claimed in a paper that it "can be used to automatically and accurately predict a range of highly sensitive personal attributes including: sexual orientation, ethnicity, religious and political views, personality traits, intelligence, happiness, use of addictive substances, parental separation, age, and gender," with a model developed by the researchers that uses a combination of dimensionality reduction and logistic/linear regression to infer this information about users

On March 17, 2018, an exposé was published by The Guardian and The New York Times, initially reporting that 50 million Facebook profiles were harvested by Cambridge Analytica; the figure was later revised to "up to 87 million" profiles. The exposé relies on information provided by Christopher Wylie, a former employee of SCL Elections and Global Science Research, the creator of the thisisyourdigitiallife app. Wylie claimed that the data from that app was sold to Cambridge Analytica, which used the data to develop "psychographic" profiles of users, and target users with pro-Trump advertising, a claim that Cambridge Analytica denied.

On April 4, 2018, The Washington Post reported that Facebook announced "malicious actors" abused the search function to gather public profile information of "most of its 2 billion users worldwide."

Below is how deep the rot is.

On June 3, 2018, a report in The New York Times indicated that Facebook had maintained data-sharing partnerships with mobile device manufacturers, specifically naming Apple, Amazon, BlackBerry, Microsoft, and Samsung. Under the terms of this personal information sharing, device manufacturers were able to gather information about users in order to deliver "the Facebook experience," the Times quotes a Facebook official as saying. Additionally, the report indicates that this access allowed device manufacturers to obtain data about a user's Facebook friends, even if those friends had configured their privacy settings to deny information sharing with third parties.

Facebook used data collected through Onavo, a VPN service the company acquired in 2013, to survey the use of mobile apps on smartphones. According to Collins, this occurred "apparently without [users'] knowledge," and was used by Facebook to determine "which companies to acquire, and which to treat as a threat."
Collins contends that "the files show evidence of Facebook taking aggressive positions against apps, with the consequence that denying them access to data led to the failure of that business." Documents disclosed specifically indicate Facebook revoked API access to video sharing service Vine.

On January 29, 2019, a TechCrunch report uncovered the "Facebook Research" program, which paid users aged 13 to 35 to receive up to $20 per month to install a VPN application similar to Onavo that allowed Facebook to gather practically all information about how phones were used. On iOS, this was distributed using Apple's Developer Enterprise Program, for which Apple briefly revoked Facebook's certificate as a result of the controversy.

On April 18, 2019, Facebook disclosed the "unintentional" harvesting of email contacts belonging to approximately 1.5 million users over the course of three years. Affected users were asked to provide email address credentials to verify their identity.

In early July, 2020, Facebook admitted to sharing user data with an estimated 5,000 third-party developers after it access to that data was supposed to expire

Full article - https://www.techrepublic.com/article...a-cheat-sheet/

[7000plusrpm]

At my home, the mobile network is spotty. I have to use either a JIO or BSNL connection or rely on voice over the internet. This is where WhatsApp was/is very important for me. If someone is unable to reach me over the phone, they try WhatsApp. Also, it is helpful for international calls. Another important feature of WhatsApp is the no-ads policy.

Due to privacy-related concerns, I'm not on Facebook or Instagram. I'm sure I'll ditch WhatsApp too in Feb. I may have to port my number to JIO or BSNL to ensure a better network reception though. I'm sure if someone is willing to contact me, they'll find a way.

[blackwasp]

These days everyone’s talking about the WhatsApp privacy issue. Now it seems that even the government has taken an interest in the matter.

NEW DELHI: In deepening troubles for WhatsApp in India, the Centre has asked the Facebook-owned instant messenger to “respect the informational privacy and data security of Indian users” and withdraw its controversial privacy update programme in the country.

Sources said the government has raised “strong concerns” over the privacy update programme rolled out globally, which would allow the company to share certain data of WhatsApp users with its parent Facebook and other platforms such as Instagram.

“Given the huge user base of WhatsApp and Facebook in India, the consolidation of this sensitive information also exposes a very large segment of Indian citizens to greater security risks and vulnerabilities creating a honeypot of information.”

A detailed questionnaire has been sent to the company as part of the communication from the IT ministry to the WhatsApp CEO Will Cathcart. TOI was the first to report on the government’s concerns over WhatsApp’s privacy update in its edition dated January 14. A questionnaire sent to WhatsApp on the matter remained unanswered.

The government is particularly displeased with two others measures that have been proposed by WhatsApp as part of the upgrade, the first being a forced adoption plan for users to either accept the update or be ready to be booted out of the ubiquitous platform, the sources said.

The below sentence is the highlight for me. Hasn’t it always been the case where Indians were treated to lower standards? Be it automotive recalls, lesser warranties or others. Case in point, France mandates headphones be sold with the new iPhones, Scandinavian countries offer legal guarantee on certain electronics and so on...

The other concern for the government is the seemingly- lenient privacy update for Europeans (in view of the citizen data protection law) vis-à-vis the plan for India and users here.

The government said that the Indian government is also in the process of formulating a data protection law for India, and undertaking any such privacy update is not suitable at this hour. “Since Parliament is seized of the issue, making such a momentous change for Indian users at this time puts the cart before the horse. Since the Personal Data Protection Bill strongly follows the principle of ‘purpose limitation’, these changes may lead to significant implementational challenges for WhatsApp should the Bill become an Act.”
On different privacy update programme for European subscribers, the government said it is a “differential treatment” for users in India. “...the differential and discriminatory treatment of Indian and European users is attracting serious criticism and shows lack of respect for the rights and interests of Indian citizens, who form one of the largest user bases for WhatsApp. Such a differential treatment is prejudicial to the interests of Indian users and is viewed with serious concern by the government.”

The IT ministry said the Indian government “owes a sovereign responsibility to its citizens to ensure that their interests are not compromised”.

On the ‘all-or-nothing approach’ adopted by the company with regards to accepting the privacy update, the government said that this method takes away any meaningful choice from Indian users. “This approach leverages the social significance of WhatsApp to force users into a bargain, which may infringe on their interests in relation to informational privacy and information security. It is expected that Facebook will value the principles of privacy and consent as laid down by the Supreme Court of India in its judgment of Justice (Retd.) K S Puttaswamy vs Union of India (2017).”

The government has asked the company to provide details of difference between WhatsApp privacy policies in other countries and India.

The exhaustive list of questions (14 in total) sent to the company includes queries around the exact categories of data that the company collects from Indian users. Also, the government asked the company to give details of the permissions and user consent that it seeks from users, and thereafter provide utility of each of these with respect to the functioning and specific service provided.

Source

[ottocycle]

I don't use facebook on day-to-day basis other than watching some LaLiga matches. And I have taken this as a push to get away from the facebook ecosystem and has been partially successful in moving most of my contacts that I care to communicate to on Signal. And I am looking forward to close my whatapp account soon.

[JTM]

The only reason I decided to start my Facebook account, was to keep track of the birthdays of my near and dear ones
I've already facilitated my switching over to Signal and have encouraged my friends and family to do so too

[msdivy]

Already being discussed in this thread - https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/gadge...our-lives.html (WhatsApp and its effect on our lives)

[J4J]

Already installed Signal. Most of my friends are on Signal.

Will use Whatsapp only for official communication.

I've left Facebook long back due to this very reason.

If majority of my contact move to signal, I'll uninstall Whatsapp.

They are defending this in our country however in UK they won't do this. Luckily we have a choice of other messenger aps without ads now.