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Facebook's WhatsApp Data Gambit Faces Federal Privacy Complaint (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the privacy-woes dept.

Sam Gustin, writing for Motherboard: Facebook's decision to begin harvesting data from its popular WhatsApp messaging service provoked a social media uproar on Thursday, and prompted leading privacy advocates to prepare a federal complaint accusing the tech titan of violating US law. On Thursday morning, WhatsApp, which for years has dined out on its reputation for privacy and security, announced that it would begin sharing user phone numbers with its Menlo Park-based parent company in an effort "to improve your Facebook ads and products experiences." Consumer privacy advocates denounced the move as a betrayal of WhatsApp's one billion users -- users who had been assured by the two companies that "nothing would change" about the messaging service's privacy practices after Facebook snapped up the startup for a whopping $19 billion in 2014. "WhatsApp users should be shocked and upset," Claire Gartland, Consumer Protection Counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a leading US consumer advocacy group, told Motherboard. "WhatsApp obtained one billion users by promising that it would protect user privacy. Both Facebook and WhatsApp made very public promises that the companies would maintain a separation. Those were the key selling points of the deal."

4 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. No problem here by stevez67 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They both had their fingers crossed when they made the privacy promises. But seriously, anyone who thought FB wasn't going to harvest data at some point from a company they bought was seriously mistaken.

    1. Re:No problem here by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It would be nice to set some legal ground rules for EULAs. Such as: they cannot be changed without prior notice, the text should fit on 4 A4-sized sheets in 12 point font, and you can only use the words in this dictionary ("the ten-hundred most used words").

      Last year I got a mortgage for a commercial property, and was pleasantly surprised by the terms and conditions: written in very plain and succinct language, and especially lacking in those unbelievable run-on sentences found in regular legalese. It is possible to write agreements that can actually be read and understood. Time to make that a requirement if companies want to have them legally enforced.

      --
      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  2. Re: Why is this news? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Get over yourselves. You're not entitled to tell someone else how to run their business. Why are you people so whiny and why do all of you have a massive sense of entitlement?

  3. Re:Those were marketing claims by Dex+Hex · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Indeed. Including the magic clause "[company] may rewrite the terms of service from time to time, and it's the users responsibility to check the website periodically [...]" solves all future problems.

    I always believed that no court in the universe will find this valid. Are you sure it's allowed in the US?