The WhatsApp messaging service announced on Friday that it would delay changes to new business features after people around the world criticized the new policy.
The Facebook-owned company said it is “going to do a lot more to clear up misinformation around how privacy and security works on WhatsApp.”
Privacy rights activists heavily criticized the WhatsApp changes, saying it was the latest step showing Facebook’s poor handling of user data.
The real issue was a far larger than expected exodus of users to services like Signal and Telegram. I doubt Facebook will actually make any meaningful changes – instead, we’ll see a different tone or wording.
Thom Holwerda,
I agree. Often times corporations back off only to attempt their agendas again when the heat dies down. Regardless, it shows how import a role the media (including yourself) play in all of this. If not for the media, consumer advocates wouldn’t really get a voice.
It did not help that Signal was actually pretty good. Half of my contacts seem to have migrated already, and the rest will probably follow suite.
I had no brand loyalty to WhatsApp other than having my friends and family there, and having end-to-end encryption. Once the privacy is being reduced, so are my ties to the app.
Well, at least I am going to try to switch to Signal and Telegram. But I cant see anything about E2E encryption in Telegram. There is no notification like in Whatsapp.
Close friends are no problem. They do install Telegram. But people who are in Whatsapp but are not very often contacted are a problem. And how will I explain this to my parents? My mother (84) is so proud she can use Whatsapp on het tablet with 4g.
I tried/installed elements.io, but I have no idea how to connect Whatsapp with their bridge.
Telegram only uses encryption if you choose the “secret chat” option. Normal 1-on-1 chats, and all group chats, are unencrypted.
Ah thanks. So to have the same level of encryption in Telegram as in Whatsapp, you should make them secret. Annoying that exsisting chats can not made encrytped.
Telegram has some bad defaults and questionable encryption – they have rolled their own and this is usually not a good idea. Then there is the issue of meta data. People leave their fingerprints all over the communications systems from telephone systems to the internet before they go near Telegram. Assuming they switch on the right settings and assuming Telegram is secure they are still generating metadata. To some degree none of the intelligence services care what you are actually saying. Yes, names, dates, and places and intent is always useful to know a head of time but you can generally get plenty of information from the meta data and traffic analysis. If something goes down almost certainly the people involved will already be “known to the security services”.
The big purge happening with social media isn’t censorship but disruption of terrorist networks and by this terrorist operations and recruitment. They don’t care what you’re actually saying. They already know who you are and who you associate with and generally speaking what you are up to and how deep you are into this.
Telegram? Secure? For whom? In principle Signal is secure but has metadata issues like wanting your phone number to regiuster. (They’re still working on this.) But Signal can be owned if you’re a target as it’s used on that most typically insecure of devices called a mobile phone.
Other than this, yes, if the encryption is sound you’re okay for average business dealing and discussing your pet cat with friends and family. Mostly, nobody cares. Yes, there are business competititors and scammers who will want to know your data but this is criminal and prosecutable. While they cannot be everywhere at once security services can and do monitor traffic for dodgy things which most of us outside of telecoms companies or ISPs or high value business and other high value targets never get to hear about and perhaps always not even then.
Yes, I agree with everything there. The one caveat is that I want some control of what large companies know about me. I’m not doing anything illegal or embarrassing, but I don’t tryst their AI to imply that I am. Take youtube, for example, I like some traditionally manly things so I watch channels about those topics, but I HATE HATE HATE guns. Very anti Gun. But Youtube continues to try showing me gun related videos. I don’t want to even see those on my screen or to be lumped in to those that do. So I’m not on whatsapp and minimally on any FB owned properties. The messaging app I want to use is one that limits the data aggradation. The company might not be owned by Facebook today, but its hard to resist a ton of money thrown your way ( see whatsapp). So if encryption makes it so the companies can’t see what I’m discussing today or tomorrow, that’s much better.
@Bill
I usually watch makeup or cooking or sciencey videos. I do watch gun and history of war stuff sometimes but I’m very picky about what I watch and don’t watch it very often.
When I did take a deeper look the first time including animal rescue videos recommendations became flooded with increasingly iffy videos. It wasn’t so much the topics but the presentation and tone which was off – loads of “rednecks” and abandoned traumatised dogs. It took in total some months to clear this. fully.
The Youtube algorithm is problematic and imho very likely trips human rights and equality and terrorist legislation. It is very definately a factor in the escalation and polarisation of political views and attitudes among certain types of people. I’m pretty sure certain content producers play on this along with coded language and careful selection of clickbait. Personally I go down the better law and regulation and policing route than leaving it to arbitrary companies and secrecy and, as you say, money… Weak FOI and “commercial confidentiality” doesn’t help either as a lot of evil and heavily lawyered wriggly justifications can be hidden out of plain sight and unless you know the magic word or someone leaks it can be years or decades before sharp practice and rights denial is uncovered.
But yes no matter how much they hide behind “aggregation” etcetera we know they buy and sell databases and run deep analysis and this knowledge of your political opinions and lifestyle and perhaps even commerical or other interests is being snooped on by people who may not be the nicest of people. And it all feeds through into three or four steps removed lobbying and meddling which may feed back to denying your rights or lessoning your life opportunities. All these things have rachet effects and knock on effects.
I am a bit surprised to see Telegram mentioned but not Threema, which is in my opinion a much better alternative, even than Signal. It is now open-source, and offers a higher protection of personal data since the company is based in Switzerland, where personal data is better protected than in most other countries (especially the USA), and it doesn’t require to provide a phone number .
I know nothing about Threema. Switzerland is no guarantee of security as the Crypto Ag scandal demonstrates. By and large encryption is a red herring. Metadata and traffic analysis is the really useful information. It’s the same thing with SATINT (Satellite Intelligence). Resolution matters but it’s not the be all and end all. The Covid-19 outbreak was first detected by heat plumes and analysing public communications.
Away from the bombs and the spy toys one of the biggest gaurantees of security is a sound civil society and supporting mechanisms like law and social attitudes and reliable utilities and food on the table.
Signal requiring a phone number is a pest but other than this how is Threema better? You don’t say. Do you mean more features? These may make for a more complicated interface and provide additional exploits. More doesn’t always equal better. On the face of it a none US based entity is better for a lot of reasons I agree but is it secure? Are any of them secure? Not really.
I do agree hyping Telegram is a bit daft as it is anything but secure and useable. A bit like Zoom…