Slashdot Mirror
Indian Students Score a Partial Win in Facebook Privacy Dispute (bloomberg.com)
WhatsApp announced last month that it would stop begin sharing some of users' information -- phone number, contact information of people in your address book etc -- with Facebook. Two Indian students last month expressed their concern over this, adding that WhatsApp was "severely" compromising their privacy and those of other billion plus users, and that it was reneging from its original promise. They approached Delhi High Court, and after hearing from everyone, the bench of chief justice told WhatsApp that it must delete data of users who are opt out of privacy policy changes before September 25. Bloomberg adds: The Delhi High Court on Friday ruled that WhatsApp has to delete all data on users who choose to stop using the service before Sept. 25, when the new policy takes effect. Also, it can only share data collected after that date. However, going forward, WhatsApp is free to share information on users who haven't opted out. The court also asked India's government to consider if it was feasible to craft regulations to oversee WhatsApp and other messaging apps, though it didn't specify what form they could take.
WhatsApp announced last month that it would stop begin sharing some of users' information
Well which one is it? It's like I don't do understand it!
Many, if not most, users of WhatsApp in India use it as a cheap way to communicate with relatives in other countries, since telecoms charge per text even in-country. Even at $0.01 per text, with the average teenager sending over 100 texts a day, that adds up if you have a bunch of kids on a family plan. With the average income being ~$120 a month, that's going to be significant.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
War is piece, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength, stop is begin.
You are being ripped off every second of every day, so that advertisers can help rip you off even more tomorrow.
India blocked access to Facebook's free internet plan. No reason they can't do the same with WhatsApp.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
It'd be better if they (and anyone else interested in privacy while texting) switched to Trillian. It's free, open-source, and not tied to some giant corporation that makes money by advertising and data collection.
The Internet, by itself, is not detrimental to privacy, it's everyone trusting these giant for-profit corporations like Microsoft and Facebook and Google. If we all used phones and PCs running various Linux flavors or similar, and didn't use anything from Microsoft or Facebook at all, we wouldn't have so many problems like this.
Not b'cos it's cheap, but b'cos it can do 2 things
1. Send photos and videos in messages to people regardless of which phone they have - Androids, iPhones or Lumias
2. In some cases, use it to make VOIP calls or even leave voice messages
Otherwise, the only way to send multimedia is MMS, which has quite a surly reputation in India - being synonymous w/ porn. iPhones are not very popular, except w/ the millionaires there, and so people can't freely use iMessage.
Or Telegram
If FaceBook wants to mine phone numbers, then WhatsApp should assign phone numbers to people that they can use - along the lines of Google Voice - which is separate from the actual phone number of the cellphone used, and which is only usable through WhatsApp. That way, people would have their main cellphone# which they voluntarily share w/ associates, and a separate number (like a junk email account) that can get all the junk calls, which from which they can select the calls they wanna accept
People in India do often have WhatsApp on their phone. Not to mention it's a Facebook owned app. So if a court orders Facebook to take it down and it doesn't, then Indian carriers - Airtel, Reliance, Vodafone, et al - would have to disable those apps or otherwise sabotage them if their networks carry packets to WhatsApp or Facebook servers. Similar to what you'd have to do if you suddenly found yourself in Iraq w/ a car that was not red.
Uh, Samsung Galaxies are very popular, and pretty much own the market. While Microsoft's Lumia, which is an asterisk in the US, is at par w/ iPhones there.
Reason for this is that for an Indian to get many of the apps and games from the Apple store, they have to have an US account, otherwise, the selection is very mediocre. That's different for Play Store or Windows Store, that have no such restrictions. So while it's true that there are Android phones ranging from a number of price points - from Rs 2k to Rs 60k, the fact that one can get any of the apps on the Play store also helps. On the Lumia side, Microsoft has consolidated its phone lineup and offers the 520, the 650 and 950. But on the app front, most of the popular apps in India that get advertized are advertized as being on all 3 - Play Store, iOS and Windows Store, unlike in the US, where it's just the first two.
New Slashdot...same as the Old Slashdot.
Except that WhatsApp gets a huge percentage of its users from India. Most Americans are fine w/ iMessage or whatever Google messaging app happens to be the order of the day.
Oh come on. We've had a strong open-source movement now for 20 years or so (it really seemed to get in high gear in the late 90s, along with the rise of the internet), and has it really gone very far? Sure, most people have a Linux kernel running on their smartphone, which they have no clue about, but for anything consumer-facing, it's all proprietary and it's gotten worse, thanks to walled garden "app stores" and the rise of Apple. I just don't see any evidence that consumers care about FOSS or are moving to it in any way. They've even moved away from Firefox towards Chrome.
but then whom do you sue?