
Setting the record straight - coloneltcb
http://blog.whatsapp.com/index.php/2014/03/setting-the-record-straight/
======
pilif
_You don’t have to give us your name and we don’t ask for your email address._

true, but by having my phone number and my friends address book that lists my
phone number, you in-fact have my phone number.

 _We don’t know your home address_

You have my friends address book which has my address for my phone number and
you have my phone number. So. No. You do in-fact have my home address.

 _We don’t know where you work_

See above

 _or collect your GPS location_

that's what you say, but you really have my GPS location, at least to some
degree as sharing my location is one of the features in WhatsApp I used at
times.

 _None of that data has ever been collected and stored by WhatsApp, and we
really have no plans to change that._

While I believe you that you so far haven't collected anything, there's
nothing to stop your new owners from collecting the data.

This post is complete nonsense and I'm just ever so happy that I have deleted
my account the moment the sale went public. Considering the fact that my GF
was able to send messages to my account despite myself having deleted it, I
doubt that anything was really deleted though. So thanks.

~~~
JTon
The post didn't ease my concerns either. To further extend your last point, I
don't understand why FB would spend so much acquiring whataspp if they didn't
plan to mine the data. I told my friends to expect targeted FB ads based on
our whatsapp convos in the future.

~~~
lpgauth
95% of WhatApp's messages don't event hit a disk and are served from memory.
It would take big architectural changes to be able to mine them. (info from
the erlang factory slides)

~~~
JTon
That's an interesting stat. How do you think FB will get an ROI on the 19B ?

EDIT: Also, do you think FB would/could man-in-the-middle the traffic a la
NSA? No architectural changes to whatsapp are needed. FB could save and fwd
the traffic. Crunch later.

~~~
sirkneeland
It could be the difficult to quantify ROI of strategic benefit from keeping it
out of the hands of Apple, Google, MSFT, etc

~~~
aryastark
$19B, to keep competition at bay, rather than use it to innovate? When your
main product is advertising? Silicon Valley is circling the drain...

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forgottenpass
_Speculation to the contrary isn’t just baseless and unfounded, it’s
irresponsible._

Easy now, you got bought by _Facebook_. Whatsapp may be retaining it's
autonomy (for now), but the speculation that your messaging/other business
records would be hooked into the greater Facebook data hoover was ANYTHING BUT
baseless, unfounded or irresponsible.

Facebook's business model involves very heavy user surveillance. I'm not even
saying that pejoratively, that's just how they operate. C'mon son!

~~~
res0nat0r
> Facebook's business model involves very heavy user surveillance.

By surveillance you mean analyzing data their users voluntarily upload to
their social network...so they can make money?

~~~
forgottenpass
Yes, surveillance. The clarification I made in my previous post was meant to
avoid exactly this tangent.

------
eps
> _If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we
> wouldn’t have done it._
    
    
                 _
                /•\
               /   \
              /     \
      +---------------------+
      |                     |
      |                     |
      |                     |
      |  I want to believe  |
      |                     |
      |                     |
      |                     |
      +---------------------+
    
      F. Mulder

------
yuvadam
Jan Kaum tells an interesting story. Unfortunately, those are all empty words.

This is the exact difference between privacy-by-policy as opposed to privacy-
by-design. If WhatsApp truly wants to make good on its promise, it must deploy
_real_ end-to-end encryption such that it can never be in a position to be
strong-armed into disclosing personal data, neither by stockholders nor by the
government.

It's a shame that they are under the thumb of StaziBook, which will never
actually deploy privacy respecting features, since that kind of goes against
their business of mining and controlling the data of every single human on
this planet.

~~~
r00fus
> It's a shame that they are under the thumb of StaziBook

Is that a colored reference to Facebook? Did you refer to Microsoft as "M$" in
previous times? A bit childish and detracts from your otherwise insightful
comment.

note: I have a pretty much dormant FB account, and run Face-blocker software
on all my browsers to avoid it's panopticon.

------
chimeracoder
It's a poignant story that the author has such personal reasons for his
interest in privacy, but the bottom line is that WhatsApp has an absolutely
_horrible_ track record of security.

Security is one area in which I generally don't give people the benefit of the
doubt (the burden of proof is on them), and so far, WhatsApp has not done much
to prove their trustworthiness[0] in this regard.

[0] Trust encompasses _both_ intent _and_ ability/execution - if either one is
lacking, the trust fails.

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devx
> Above all else, I want to make sure you understand how deeply I value the
> principle of private communication.

How deeply? Enough to implement proper end to end encryption? Otherwise,
you're just paying lip service to "privacy", just like Facebook and others
are. They all say "we value your privacy greatly", but track and mine every
single thing you do or say. The facts don't match the words in almost every
case.

So _show us_ how much you value our privacy. Implement end to end encryption
(by default, obviously - don't pull a Telegram).

------
lazyjones
That's all nice and dandy and I don't have reason to doubt the noble stance of
the founders, but what is the opinion on privacy of the _new_ owner of
WhatsApp?

Anyone who has ever sold a business (or part of it) knows that new owners
exercise control and it's their legally enforceable right to do so.

------
rondon2
Translation: Please do not move to the next WhatsApp clone to become popular.
It would be really bad for Facebook and WhatsApp if the 450 million users
switched to a new app overnight.

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FD3SA
This post fails to explain the value of Whatsapp to facebook at a very basic
level. If everything about privacy in this post is correct, what exactly is
facebook getting out of this deal? They paid 19B for Whatsapp, and are not
going to collect any data on the users? How does that make any financial
sense?

Appeals to emotion regarding the KGB are great, but you cannot convince me
that a company the size of facebook would donate 19B to Whatsapp and expect
nothing in return. Furthermore, having been acquired by facebook does not
constitute a "partnership", since the decision making power of the founders
has quite literally been sold off to the highest bidder.

~~~
devcpp
You could pretend they were perceived as a threat for Facebook and Facebook
just bought the peace of knowing they have no remotely significant threat
other than Google+.

Although, knowing Facebook, I have a really hard time just taking this guy's
word for it. I won't be installing Whatsapp until it's both free software and
has end-to-end encryption. I'll tolerate it being centralized because
Facebook/NSA having our metadata would be acceptable while we wait for a
better alternative.

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iamthepieman
This is a nice sentiment but how meaningful is it now that whatsapp is owned
by facebook? Jan Koum may use the word "Partnership" to describe the
Facebook/Whatsapp relationship but they didn't start a foundation or go in on
an open source project together - Facebook bought Whatsapp.

------
chippy
>If partnering with Facebook meant that we had to change our values, we
wouldn’t have done it.

Doesn't the obligation to the shareholders and investors to make as much
return on the investment trump any values the founders may have?

In other words, doesn't the business have to be showing that it's doing the
right thing to their investors? Where the right thing means getting NINETEEN
Billion dollars.

Edits: Another way of wording my question would be: Could they really have
actually said "no" to them, and gotten away with it?

~~~
ForHackernews
Also, getting bought out is not the same thing as "partnering with".

A partnership can be dissolved by either party. Facebook _owns_ WhatsApp.

------
dictum
>The fact that we couldn’t speak freely without the fear that our
communications would be monitored by KGB is in part why we moved to the United
States when I was a teenager.

>Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA

It is not respect for the user's privacy that keeps the NSA, the FSB or any
other agency from listening to, storing or censoring your user's
communications. Respect for privacy is a good _principle_ , but if the
technology does not reflect the principle, it's there only to make some people
(founders, employees, investors, customers and users) feel better.

------
DanBC
What value does Whatsapp have for Facebook if FB cannot mine the users for
data?

What's the point of buying whatsapp? How does FB make money from those users?

------
Rizz
What about the data Whatsapp does collect? Like other people's phone numbers.
What happens with that within Facebook?

And of course being principled about not tracking or getting more information
than necessary and then partnering with the company that does nothing but just
that is a bit perplexing to me.

------
primitivesuave
I really like the founder's sentiment, and the fact that it ties into his
personal experience makes it more believable. However, the only real way to
stick it to Facebook anymore is to stop using WhatsApp - they paid $35.56 for
you, and they're not getting a refund.

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mbesto
> _None of that data has ever been collected and stored by WhatsApp, and we
> really have no plans to change that._

Just because WhatsApp has no plans today doesn't make plans to exercise it
tomorrow less viable.

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segphault
It seems incredibly disingenuous to assert that WhatsApp won't collect
personal data while sidestepping the question of what happens when WhatsApp
identities become correlated with Facebook accounts.

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bowlofpetunias
Wow, that is extremely misleading and manipulative, especially with the "I'm
from the Ukraine" anecdote.

They're not "partnering with", they're being _bought_. And as a result, they
will owned by a company with zero respect for privacy, located in a country
with little respect for privacy and the weakest privacy protections in the
Western hemisphere. A company who's very core business model exclusively
consists of selling their user's privacy to third parties.

WhatsApp's guarantees are worth exactly zero. At best, they are merely honest
intentions, but formulated in such a misleading way that they become
untrustworthy from the start.

------
mef
For someone who grew up in the shadow of the KGB, the post's author engages in
some pretty blatant doublespeak using the word "partnership" to characterize a
relationship which is wholly one-sided.

------
npizzolato
> Make no mistake: our future partnership with Facebook will not compromise
> the vision that brought us to this point.

I think this phrasing is the most telling. This is not a partnership. Facebook
wholly owns Whatsapp. As soon as Facebook decides that their vision for
Whatsapp is more important than the vision laid out in this post, Whatsapp
will be powerless to do anything. The fact that Jan Koum now sits on
Facebook's board may help to mitigate any change to Whatsapp, but it does not
change this fundamental fact.

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vise890
uh oh . someone is scared...

------
RyanZAG
This seems kind of pointless. I don't think anybody believed Whatsapp wasn't
storing phonebooks/location/etc before the Facebook merger, and I'm pretty
sure nobody really believes Facebook won't in the future. Comes across as
desperate to stop... something? Did I miss the outcry against this merger
somewhere?

------
seertaak
Ever since Facebook bought whatsapp, my partner, family and I have switched to
TextSecure, and we've been very happy so far.

If you're concerned about Facebook's record on privacy, TextSecure is the way
to go. They recently added data messages, so it's no longer tied to SMS only.

(Note: I'm not affiliated with TextSecure in any way.)

------
silentOpen
He should publish the terms of the sale if he wants us to believe that this
privacy stance will be hard to change.

------
munificent
> None of that data has ever been collected and stored by WhatsApp, and we
> really have no plans to change that.

I love the "really" there. Even while trying to reassure people, he couldn't
resist leaving himself at least a little bit of an out.

------
mpclark
I admire the sentiment, but I can't help being reminded of Wayne Rooney's
"once a Blue, always a Blue" shirt. I'm sure he also meant it wholeheartedly
at the time.

Sadly there are 19bn reasons for this situation to change.

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cliveowen
They're starting to feel the effects of the mass exodus to Telegram.

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dasil003
> _None of that data has ever been collected and stored by WhatsApp, and we
> really have no plans to change that._

I believe you.

However Facebook owns your company now, so the future of WhatsApp is not your
call anymore.

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y0ghur7_xxx
> Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA

I believe you, but I don't believe that Facebook shares your principles.

------
benched
Oh please. How utterly patronizing. Even down to the hackneyed "humbled"
cliche in the first sentence. Jan Koum and WhatsApp, just take your billions
and go buy a yacht. Are you really having fun trying to control the message?

Will people with platforms ever stop using them to spout self-serving
bullshit?

