
WhatsApp threatened with legal action in Germany over Facebook data sharing deal - mariusavram
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/whatsapp-threatened-with-legal-action-over-facebook-data-sharing-deal-a7318981.html
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reitanqild
Anybody feels for discussing the actual meat of the post (consumer watchdogs
actually threatening to sue Facebook) instead of discussing the alternatives
or the lack of proper encryption in Telegram yet again?

I for one am very happy to see this, both because it might teach Facebook and
others a valuable lesson about messing with European consumers and because I
used to love the old Whatsapp.

~~~
iaw
A few thoughts:

* Encryption is one possible response to the broader concern around what companies are doing with user data

* The broader concern, what are companies doing with our data, is often only spoken of from the consumer perspective. Consumers don't want liberties taken with their personal information, the nightmare scenario is that no one has privacy.

* From a business perspective: what should FB and WhatsApp do? People are accustomed to getting free services on the internet, it's been that way since the beginning, but these services have always cost someone something. It's not feasible to charge for most messaging services due to competitive reasons.

* On the one side we have a nightmare scenario that no one wants, on the other we have the realistic economics of providing a service. Is there a compromise where the consumers can trust the providers to not harm them while still allowing the providers to make money?

As an aside: Telegram is not, and never will-be, a secure platform as has been
detailed on HN by cryptographic experts when the service first launched.

~~~
reitanqild
> From a business perspective: what should FB and WhatsApp do?

V e r y simple: stuck to the existing business model.

Or: if they really needed to make it free for consumers: their second idea,
free for consumers, charge for business access (api etc). I was actually
looking forward to that.

> As an aside: Telegram is not, and never will-be, a secure platform as has
> been detailed on HN by cryptographic experts when the service first
> launched.

Neither is twitter. I don't see any of you complain about how tweets are
public for the world to see.

Telegram isn't a tool to defeat NSA, it is a tool to send stuff faster than
email, with 100% less Facebook.

I can admit though that Telgrams marketing of their encryption has been at
least borderline dishones.

~~~
iaw
> I can admit though that Telgrams marketing of their encryption has been at
> least borderline dishones.

So, 100% Facebook free with a company that is borderline dishonest in how it
communicates about the things we can confirm... Why is that the better devil?

~~~
reitanqild
Telegram was borderline dishonest.

Facebook is dishonest which is why consumer watchdogs are threatening to sue.

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raverbashing
Something 'funny' about new Fb messenger version is that it steals your SMSs
from your inbox automatically

Yes, you can opt out, AFTER it read your unread SMSs

~~~
mariusavram
Reality is many don't even care :(

~~~
hocuspocus
Outside the US, many don't really use SMS ;)

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thr0waway1239
If there was ever a case for anti-trust folks to step in and break a larger
entity into two separate entities, this would be it.

I still have no clue how this deal got ignored by the anti-trust folks,
especially after they saw the price tag.

~~~
bedros
simple, facebook gives backdoor access to all their user's data to all
governments. It's a win-win situation for facebook and every country FB
operates in.

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QuantumRoar
Remember that when Facebook promises something next time.

I'm slowly moving communications over to Signal.

~~~
sagischwarz
How reliable is Signal these days? I basically moved all my friends to Text
Secure shortly after WhatsApp had been acquired by FB , but after some time we
got constant problems of messages not being delivered, so we switched to
Threema.

~~~
QuantumRoar
I've been using Signal for the past few months and I haven't noticed any
issues. But I'm not exactly a heavy user.

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jamespo
I'm moving to signal / telegram / flavour-of month.

What's that, I have no contacts on any of those services? I guess that's even
more secure.

~~~
reitanqild
Eh, I know hating both/all is trendy now but at least both Whatsapp and
Telegram add all your contacts that are on the service immediately.

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Kenji
This is not really related to WhatsApp but I feel like it was also a mistake
of Oculus VR to be bought by facebook. When I first read it, I thought that VR
in general took a big hit, and I still think that, simply because the motives
and incentives of facebook are not aligned with that kind of stuff.

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watwatwatwat
Good! Time to move to telegram! And delete your facebook account! And
uninstall whatsapp!

I expect nothing less from HN.

~~~
sroecker
Please do not use Telegram. It' closed source and uses some half-baked crypto.
Signal is open source and is actually end-to-end encrypted.

~~~
unicornporn
Wire[1] is also an excellent option. Unlike Open Whisper Systems they wont
hang you from a tree for building a third party app. Signal wont work without
Gapps or Google Play Services on your Android phone and Google Chrome for
desktop.

[1] [https://wire.com/](https://wire.com/)

~~~
codethief
Signal does work with MicroG ([https://microg.org/](https://microg.org/)), an
open source reimplementation of Google Play Services.

~~~
kuschku
But that still requires using the Google Play Services library in the Signal
APK, still doing analytics.

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mhurron
WhatsApp is Facebook. They're basically just two applications from the same
company now. Are we going to have a ruling that data can't be passed from Lync
to Skype in Microsoft, or from GMail to Googles Ad network?

Just because corporate policy in 2014 was they would be completely separate
doesn't mean that in 2016 that is now seen as a good idea (for them). Facebook
makes money off your data, it was pretty obvious this was going to happen
eventually.

I do not understand the rage about this from people who know they're the same
company.

~~~
CaptSpify
Agreed. In other new: water is wet

Sharing data is what these companies _do_. The only way to keep your data safe
is to use open-source, e2e systems

~~~
beagle3
The data facebook gets from whatsapp is mostly the directed connectivity graph
(and the intensity of each edge). That's data that, in the vast majority of
e2e setups, any 3rd party with visibility to the network traffic will be able
to see.

~~~
CaptSpify
What about the conversations? That's where all the juicy data is stored.

