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Facebook Told To Stop Taking Data From German WhatsApp Users (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader shares a Bloomberg report: Facebook, already under scrutiny in the U.S. and the European Union for revisions to privacy policies for its WhatsApp messaging service, was ordered by Hamburg's privacy watchdog to stop processing data of German users of the chat service. In a renewed clash with the social-network operator, Johannes Caspar, one of Germany's most outspoken data protection commissioners, ordered Facebook to delete any data it already has. The news comes as EU privacy regulators, who previously expressed concerns about the policy shift, meet in Brussels to discuss their position. There's no legal basis for Facebook to use information of WhatsApp customers, Caspar said Tuesday. "This order protects the data of about 35 million WhatsApp users in Germany," Caspar said. "It has to be their decision as to whether they want to connect their account with Facebook. Therefore, Facebook has to ask for their permission in advance. This has not happened."
It's not a "guy", it's a public offical telling Facebook that in the eyes of the adminstration, they are violating the law, and that they need to stop doing that. It's the same thing as a policeman stopping your car and telling you you were speeding. Now you can either accept their verdict or ignore it, at which point it is going to court.
having the decency to squarely tell Facebook "you're breaking our laws, stop it or else".
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
It is not discussed enough, if people have faith in company A and are happy to away their information to that company, that is fine. If company A then gets bought out in a hostile takeover by nasty company B - the original members never signed up to that and everyone should explicitly be made to opt in or all user data should be deleted. These huge companies are getting away with it all the time and posting conditions of service like it somehow absolves them from any laws. Creating a monopoly should be hindered, not rewarded.
No it isn't, because it's enough if someone else has your phone number in his address book. You don't actually need to use WhatsApp or Facebook
I woke for a large German company, and we just received notice that the app will be removed from all of our corporate phones if installed. I am not sure why the app became so popular in Germany specifically.
That has very little to do with this. That would apply IF Facebook had actually notified WhatsApp users that it would start slurping in their data. They just started doing that without any kind of warning or consent, which breaks privacy law, which is what this was about.
Nope, it doesn't work like that. "Vote with your wallet" is just neoliberal propaganda. If something is illegal, it cannot be done, and if you do it you go to jail. It doesn't matter what "the market" says, no "invisible hand" can change that (and no "invisible hand" has never existed, for the record), and it also doesn't matter what the privacy policy says, forbidden means forbidden: even if all the 7 billion human beings suddenly, explicitly agreed to be spied on and were even ready paid for that, it would still be illegal.
Facebook, Microsoft, and Google, all have one thing in common. Their existence is based on extracting information from you. I'm really starting to distance myself. The Internet isn't interesting like it used to be. It seems very monopolized with a herd-like mentality. People seem to have become a product for the Internet, rather than the Internet being a product for the people.
As far as I'm aware, the main thing WhatsApp has going for it, in a similar way Skype did, is that it allows international texting on the cheap.
I believe here in the US it isn't much to add on to a wireless plan to get international texting, but in other parts of the world, they charge by the text and gouge pretty hard on it. I would be interested to know how much Deutsche Telekom (or other major wireless operators) charge for international texts.
So WhatApp is the perfect mix of ease of use (no login needed), cheap (was 1 USD a year after the first year, now its free), and by passes the expensive text charges.
As an anecdote, I regularly text a small group, with one person in the UK, another in Singapore, and another in Thailand. Last I looked, if I didn't have unlimited international texting in my wireless plan, it would be like 25 cents PER TEXT. So a small conversation of rapid fire texts would rack up pretty fast.
Don't want to follow German laws? Don't do business here. I started to use WhatsApp when it was not free (is it now?) and Facebook certainly added nothing of value, the data grab is just self serving and illegal.
I believe it became popular in many countries for two main reasons 1) It allowed to send unlimited messages at a time when telcos in many markets would charge you per individual text 2) Unlike existing alternatives at the time (gtalk, skype) it used your phone number as your account id, so setting up the app was frictionless, specially among non tech-savvy smartphone users.
Laws have changed. International SMS is now limited to 0.08 I think. No such limit for national, so it becomes cheaper to send international.
This all will depend on country, provider and plan you have. Pre-paid will be different again. It is a shitfuck and you can not really compare things.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.