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The Guardian Reveals That Whisper App Tracks "Anonymous" Users
New submitter qqod writes this story at The Guardian that raises privacy concerns over the Whisper app. "The company behind Whisper, the social media app that promises users anonymity and claims to be the “the safest place on the internet”, is tracking the location of its users, including some who have specifically asked not to be followed. The practice of monitoring the whereabouts of Whisper users – including those who have expressly opted out of geolocation services – will alarm users, who are encouraged to disclose intimate details about their private and professional lives. Whisper is also sharing information with the US Department of Defense gleaned from smartphones it knows are used from military bases, and developing a version of its app to conform with Chinese censorship laws."
Looks like I WILL NOT be trying this app at all. I was a bit curious.
We could have been so good together
We could have lived this dance forever
It's getting to the point where you can't trust anything these days, because the NSA or other criminals seem to have access to your data.
And remember, the FBI head dude doesn't want you to use encryption.
Is this the America we are supposed to be proud of?
Be seeing you...
Any business depends on profit to survive, and there is no profit to be had in providing privacy...and certainly not privacy without a fee. A fee of course means a method of payment, and every method of payment is traceable to some extent. Even totally volunteer systems are no guarantee of privacy, as governments are certain to be the first to volunteer.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
"He’s a guy that we’ll track for the rest of his life and he’ll have no idea we’ll be watching him," the same Whisper executive said.
Pro-tip: The people who scream the loudest about privacy and anonymity, but won't show you their source: these are the honeypots. And agent provocateurs. If someone's pushing you to do something for no good reason, perhaps you should ignore them.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/style-blog/wp/2014/10/16/secret-sharing-app-whisper-to-the-guardian-you-published-a-pack-of-vicious-lies-about-us/
Whisper, darling child of the online anonymity surge, is going to war with the Guardian over a story saying the app tracks the identities and locations of some users.
Launched two years ago, Whisper says it’s the “safest place on the internet,” a social networking app that lets people anonymously share short messages — “whispers” — supposedly detached from any identifiable information.
But in a lengthy takedown published Thursday, the Guardian claims otherwise, saying Whisper uses a handful of tools to subvert its own claims of privacy and anonymity. Whisper, according to the Guardian report, tracks newsworthy users and uses roundabout methods of finding out the locations of users who decline to share it; the company then shares that information with third parties, including the U.S. government, the Guardian reported.
The outlet also said the app changed its privacy policy after it was made aware that the Guardian’s story would run.
All of these claims, Whisper officials said, are patently false.
Whisper’s editor-in-chief, Neetzan Zimmerman, went into attack mode immediately after the story was published, saying it was a “pack of vicious lies” and that “the Guardian made a mistake posting that story and they will regret it.”
Reached by phone, Zimmerman categorically denied the basis of the story, saying that while certain degrees of tracking (such as a city of location) are possible through simply connecting to the Internet, the methods the Guardian described are “either outright false or misguided or misinformed.”
“Clearly, their intention was for absolutely no reason to write a hit piece about us and try to scare away our users,” Zimmerman said, sounding irate at times.
The Guardian story describes techniques that Whisper allegedly uses to find “newsworthy” users, such as those who work at Yahoo and Disney, or on Capitol Hill. It also says there is a technical backdoor that allows Whisper to pinpoint the location of users who have declined to share their location with the app, and that Zimmerman and another executive had requested staff to exploit it.
But Zimmerman, fuming at the accusations, said such backdoors are “technically impossible.”
“That is false, that is 100 percent false,” he said. “That was never said by anyone. I have no idea where that quote came from. I have no idea what they’re talking about. I have never, ever, ever asked anybody in my life, and would never ask anybody, for information on a user who opted out of user location. That cannot be overemphasized. That is a 100 percent lie.”
He added that no change was made to the app’s privacy policy as a response to the Guardian’s story. (Still, my colleague Brian Fung noted that any changes to a privacy policy may invite inquiry from the FTC.)
Whisper employees can, however, search for keywords (analogous to a Twitter search) to find users and their “whispers” that may be interesting to some of its media partners, including BuzzFeed, which publishes an ongoing series of posts that highlight interesting or newsworthy messages on the service.
A BuzzFeed spokesman told Valleywag on Thursday: “We’re taking a break from our partnership until Whisper clarifies to us and its users the policy on user location and privacy.”
Zimmerman also said the Guardian has had a months-long partnership with Whisper that used the very techniques the article decries.
“There are at least three Guardian stories written off Whisper, and two of which we
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!