Malcolm Owen
WhatsApp is attempting to appease users who are considering migrating away from the Facebook-owned service over privacy policy changes, by using its Status feature to remind users it cannot read their encrypted conversations.
Users of WhatsApp were spooked by a proposed change to a privacy policy, intended to update how business chat logs are stored so they can be kept on Facebook servers. The policy change led to a wave of users believing it was a grab for personal data by Facebook, which then led to a mass exodus of users onto other privacy-focused services.
So far, WhatsApp has posted on social media and its website clarifying the policy, as well as insisting the conversations of users are kept private by end-to-end encryption, preventing it and Facebook from seeing or hearing the content, and delaying the implementation of the policy. On Saturday, it went one step further.
WhatsApp started to post Status updates, a feature similar to Stories offered by services like Instagram and Snapchat, about the app's privacy, reports The Verge. The messages, received by a considerable number of users, reiterated points about its inability to "read or listen to your personal conversations" due to the use of end-to-end encryption.
"There's been a lot of misinformation and confusion around our recent update and we want to help everyone understand the facts behind how WhatsApp protects people's privacy and security," a WhatsApp spokesperson explained. "Going forward, we're going to provide updates to people in the Status tab so people hear from WhatsApp directly."
It remains to be seen if the privacy effort will help prevent the scores of users looking to other services that also provide end-to-end encryption, but without the connection to Facebook.
Apps like Telegram and Signal have become beneficiaries of switching users, with Signal enduring a lengthy downtime as it expanded capacity to cope with the "millions of new Signal users."
This is not the only privacy issue WhatsApp has dealt with. In December, it claimed Apple's privacy nutrition labels were anticompetitive, as preinstalled apps like iMessage weren't subject to the same policy.
In November, WhatsApp warned users that its disappearing messages feature couldn't guarantee the messages won't exist in some form after it leaves the conversation. As well as obvious situations such as screenshots, the messages could hang around in different forms, including user backups and media saved to a phone.
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Charles Martin
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
Wesley Hilliard
Andrew Orr
8 Comments
The damage is done. Most of my friends and myself already switched to Signal.
whats whatsapp?
I spent 60 seconds reading through the technical details of the paper ("WhatsApp Encryption Overview"), which you can find in the links in the article. My first impression is that the paper passes my sniff test. But I'm not good enough to accurately evaluate the encryption algorithm or key exchange algorithms. The key lengths and algorithms used both appear adequate even though I'm not an expert at this subject.
But I still don't have a comfy feeling about the overall situation. Encryption only protects the data in transit, not the data at rest in your device, such as your contacts. WhatsApp says they don't send your Contacts to Facebook and I guess I believe that, but there's so much more data! The fact that they DIDN'T say, "We send absolutely NOTHING to FaceBook, ever" makes me wonder why they didn't say that. Indeed, they SAID if you click on FaceBook ads in their app then some data does get sent to FaceBook, but what? Probably at least an identifier which tells them exactly who you are.
I don't feel it's a crime to track people on the Internet, at least not yet. So I don't feel that they are breaking any law. At least in most free countries there are laws preventing the STATE from tracking its own citizens. Even if you don't like CORPORATIONS tracking you without limit, at least you can be happy that the STATE doesn't. Let's talk about limiting what private companies can track. Maybe the law should change.
I think there are laws in the US regarding minimum ages that corporations can track. Just a thought: why don't you change your profile in WhatsApp or FaceBook and tell them you are 12 years old? Even if you are 62. That may trigger some restrictions on what their software can do to track you. Hey, I don't think it's a crime to lie about your age to another person or company. In fact, why not lie about everything? Weight, height, gender, age, ethnicity, language, religion, etc.?