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69 lines
3.6 KiB
69 lines
3.6 KiB
4 years ago
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title = "Commented Link: Giving More Time For Our Recent Update"
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date = 2021-01-19
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ["privacy", "whatsapp", "facebook"]
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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... [giving more time for you to accept
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it](https://blog.whatsapp.com/giving-more-time-for-our-recent-update). But some
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things really don't pan out.
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<!-- more -->
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 *will* happen. If there is no selection to get out/disable these things,
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it is no option at all.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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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.
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