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130 lines
6.2 KiB
130 lines
6.2 KiB
11 months ago
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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<html lang="en">
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<head>
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<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
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<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
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<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1, viewport-fit=cover">
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<title>Julio Biason .Me 4.3</title>
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<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/print.css" media="print">
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</head>
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<body class=" ">
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<div class="sidebar">
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<div class="container sidebar-sticky">
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<div class="sidebar-about">
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me"><h1>Julio Biason .Me 4.3</h1></a>
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<p class="lead">Old school dev living in a 2.0 dev world</p>
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</div>
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<ul class="sidebar-nav">
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<li class="sidebar-nav-item"><a href="/">English</a></li>
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<li class="sidebar-nav-item"><a href="/pt">Português</a></li>
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<li class="sidebar-nav-item"><a href="/tags">Tags (EN)</a></li>
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<li class="sidebar-nav-item"><a href="/pt/tags">Tags (PT)</a></li>
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</ul>
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</div>
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</div>
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<div class="content container">
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<div class="post">
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<h1 class="post-title">Commented Link: Giving More Time For Our Recent Update</h1>
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<span class="post-date">
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2021-01-19
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/privacy/">#privacy</a>
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/whatsapp/">#whatsapp</a>
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/facebook/">#facebook</a>
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</span>
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<p>WhatsApp recently decided to change the way they allow people using their
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platform, allowing Facebook to collect information. But the backlash was a bit
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too much and now they are... erm... <a href="https://blog.whatsapp.com/giving-more-time-for-our-recent-update">giving more time for you to accept
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it</a>. But some
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things really don't pan out.</p>
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<span id="continue-reading"></span>
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<p>First of all, the next paragraphs may be the result of bad PR, but the fact is:
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Some things don't look good.</p>
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<p>For example, they mention that people are "confused" and that there is "a lot
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of misinformation" floating around. But what points are people confused about?
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What misinformation is being spread and what is real? Those two point are not
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pointed out, so you don't know what is real and what is not.</p>
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<p>And there isn't a single word about "change". They are not changing the wording
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on their update to clear the confusing, they are not changing the update
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itself. Get used to it. Accept or get out.</p>
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<p>But, then again, that could be simply bad PR. No idea on what to do, no
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experience in this kind of communication problem, so not a single word that
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could give security that those changes are not what they seem.</p>
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<p>But let me take this a bit deeper: WhatsApp is constantly reassuring that
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end-to-end encryption will not change, even when you communicate with business.
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The post points to their FAQ, with a link that says they are providing "more
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options", but the FAQ itself shows that those are not options: It shows things
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that <em>will</em> happen. If there is no selection to get out/disable these things,
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it is no option at all.</p>
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<p>And even if the conversation is end-to-end encrypted, there is no word about
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metadata. Metadata is important 'cause it tells a lot without saying exactly
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what. For example, in a end-to-end encrypted conversation, nobody can see what
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I discussed with my (non-existent) wife, but the metadata says that our
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location is not the same for a while (they don't capture your location, but a
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lot can be said with your IP), there was a long discussion between us ('cause,
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again, characters and number of messages is pure metadata, not the data itself)
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and, for some reason, after this talk, I opened another talk with someone whose
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Facebook profile says it is a Divorce Lawyer. But no, your data is safe.</p>
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<p>Why this is a problem? One of the changes in this update is that "some
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information may be shared with third-parties" and you can be sure that one of
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those "third-parties" is Facebook -- although this is not troubling yet. But
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imagine that I use WhatsApp to talk with my favorite vegan pizza place. Again,
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metadata is shared between WhatsApp and Facebook, and now Facebook, collecting
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my profile, knows that I like vegan pizza. And now there is another data point
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on it. While this is not bad for me, it is bad for the vegan pizza place,
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'cause I'll start getting pizza ads on my Facebook feed. This basically means
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that business using WhatsApp business are shooting themselves in the foot.</p>
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<p>Also, the wording in their "Shared With Facebook FAQ" (which is another link
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away) says that business may use Facebook infrastructure to provide receipts
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and chatting. But this could still be end-to-end encrypted, so there was no
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change at all: Facebook would be simply a service provider for storing that
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information. If instead of Facebook, WhatsApp decided to use AWS infrastruture,
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there would be a change in their privacy terms?</p>
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<p>I'm not saying that this change looks like a huge breach in our already eroded
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privacy, but from 10.000 feet view, it looks like something is bad.</p>
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</div>
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</body>
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</html>
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