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WhatsApp threatened with legal action in Germany over Facebook data sharing deal
- Kenji 10y agoThis is not really related to WhatsApp but I feel like it was also a mistake of Oculus VR to be bought by facebook. When I first read it, I thought that VR in general took a big hit, and I still think that, simply because the motives and incentives of facebook are not aligned with that kind of stuff.
- watwatwatwat 10y agoGood! Time to move to telegram! And delete your facebook account! And uninstall whatsapp! I expect nothing less from HN.
- subliminalpanda 10y agoI don't care too much for Facebook but WhatsApp has become essential to communicate with almost everyone I know.
- sroecker 10y agoPlease do not use Telegram. It' closed source and uses some half-baked crypto. Signal is open source and is actually end-to-end encrypted.
- romanovcode 10y agoExactly. Not to mention if it becomes popular it will get sold to megacorp in a heartbeat.
- watwatwatwat 10y agoI'll give signal another try, last time I couldn't register.
- unicornporn 10y agoWire[1] is also an excellent option. Unlike Open Whisper Systems they wont hang you from a tree for building a third party app. Signal wont work without Gapps or Google Play Services on your Android phone and Google Chrome for desktop. [1] https://wire.com/ https://wire.com/
- tdkl 10y agoI tried Wire after this WhatsApp news came out initially and brought about 10 people (friends/family) to it. They're satisfied how it works.
- codethief 10y agoSignal does work with MicroG (https://microg.org/ https://microg.org/), an open source reimplementation of Google Play Services.
- kuschku 10y agoBut that still requires using the Google Play Services library in the Signal APK, still doing analytics.
- bwindels 10y agoNo windows phone client :-(
- lmm 10y agoSignal is pseudo-open-source but will not allow you to use it except via the closed-source google play services, so I still wouldn't have confidence in it.
- glogla 10y agoYes. Also, on what payroll is Moxie now? He was working with Facebook on WhatsApp and then worked with Google on their new messaging app.
- codethief 10y agoThis is incorrect. There is an open source reimplementation of Google Play Services (https://microg.org/ https://microg.org/) and Signal works beautifully with it.
- kuschku 10y agoSo the Signal APK does NOT depend on the Google Cloud Messaging library anymore, which pulls in 40k LOC of analytics?
- claudius 10y agoAnd wherefrom can you get Signal except for the Google Play store? I was looking for it a while ago to install on my phone but only found two other projects which were threatened by moxie and then shut down.
- aorth 10y agoI compile my own binaries. Not too bad actually.
- reitanqild 10y agoA lot of people here use twitter. Why must things be provably sure to have any value?
- eggie 10y agoTelegrams clients (and the e2e encryption) are open source. For instance: https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram https://github.com/DrKLO/Telegram Curious if you know why the crypto is half-baked. Has it been broken? edit: found Signal server, I think: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Server https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure-Server Nice it's out there. This will help Signal live a long time.
- khabaal 10y agoI would not entrust my data to telegram either. Enrolling your own crypto protocol [MTProto] is, in my opinion, something which you should not do. They also have a nice privacy policy, which is worth looking at: https://telegram.org/privacy https://telegram.org/privacy
- raverbashing 10y ago> Enrolling your own crypto protocol [MTProto] is, in my opinion, something which you should not do Signal did the same thing. The question is who's more capable and builds a more secure system
- unicornporn 10y agoIf you've used Telegram for a while you will notice that in practice no one uses secret chats because these chats don't sync between devices. Your "non-secret" chats are readable by Pavel and anyone he wishes to share them with. I guess it's fine if you trust Pavel's good intentions. I don't[1]. [1] https://www.instagram.com/p/-MrPWGr7aL/ https://www.instagram.com/p/-MrPWGr7aL/
- pawadu 10y agoHoly shit, Pavel sounds very much like JM Le Pen.
- takdi 10y agoBut unfortunately he's right
- reitanqild 10y agoI don't know what I would feel worst about: being compared to Merkel or Le Pen
- eatbitseveryday 10y agoThere is a lot of hype over encrypted chat programs. Telegram's encryption is not end-to-end unless you opt into "Secret Chats"[1] and many claim their crypto is not secure[2,3] as they rolled their own[4]. The latest Google chat app Allo also backed away from defaulting to end-to-end encryption for all messages as it lessens the quality of their auto-assistant[5]. The Axolotl protocol (developed by Moxie and Trevor[6]) is available in Signal and was later adopted by WhatsApp. Signal has far fewer features than other chat applications, and people aren't clamoring much about it; I would guess because many people place features > crypto. Wire (wire.com) uses this protocol as well[7]. WhatsApp being part of Facebook has already called into question their handling of privacy[8], the feature they were originally advertising as their main strength. [1] https://telegram.org/faq#secret-chats https://telegram.org/faq#secret-chats [2] http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/is-telegram-secure#49802 http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/is-telegra... [3] http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-cryptanalysis-contest http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-crypta... [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6916860 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6916860 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12547130 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12547130 [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Ratchet_Algorithm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Ratchet_Algorithm [7] https://wire.com/resource/Wire%20Security%20Whitepaper/download/ https://wire.com/resource/Wire%20Security%20Whitepaper/downl... [8] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/technology/relaxing-privacy-vow-whatsapp-to-share-some-data-with-facebook.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/technology/relaxing-privac...
- danieldk 10y agoStill hoping that iMessage will switch to Axolotl rather than their broken E2E design.
- reitanqild 10y agoWhy do you feel for insulting all of us at once? HN is the most open, thoughtful (and honest-but-careful) public forum I know of and I intend to do my part to keep it that way.
- QuantumRoar 10y agoRemember that when Facebook promises something next time. I'm slowly moving communications over to Signal.
- mariusavram 10y agoBut it's so hard to try to convince non-tech people to move to another app when they are so comfortable with Whatsapp...
- reitanqild 10y agoAll my friends except my parents and siblings and a single group of people that includes some old ones have already moved after Whatsapp went "free".
- Grangar 10y agoMy circle moved to Telegram for about a month, then went back to WA because other people stayed there. FML.
- sagischwarz 10y agoHow reliable is Signal these days? I basically moved all my friends to Text Secure shortly after WhatsApp had been acquired by FB , but after some time we got constant problems of messages not being delivered, so we switched to Threema.
- QuantumRoar 10y agoI've been using Signal for the past few months and I haven't noticed any issues. But I'm not exactly a heavy user.
- codethief 10y agoI've been using it for more than a year now. No problems whatsoever.
- detaro 10y ago
- jamespo 10y agoI'm moving to signal / telegram / flavour-of month. What's that, I have no contacts on any of those services? I guess that's even more secure.
- reitanqild 10y agoEh, I know hating both/all is trendy now but at least both Whatsapp and Telegram add all your contacts that are on the service immediately.
- mhurron 10y agoWhatsApp is Facebook. They're basically just two applications from the same company now. Are we going to have a ruling that data can't be passed from Lync to Skype in Microsoft, or from GMail to Googles Ad network? Just because corporate policy in 2014 was they would be completely separate doesn't mean that in 2016 that is now seen as a good idea (for them). Facebook makes money off your data, it was pretty obvious this was going to happen eventually. I do not understand the rage about this from people who know they're the same company.
- CaptSpify 10y agoAgreed. In other new: water is wet Sharing data is what these companies do. The only way to keep your data safe is to use open-source, e2e systems
- beagle3 10y agoThe data facebook gets from whatsapp is mostly the directed connectivity graph (and the intensity of each edge). That's data that, in the vast majority of e2e setups, any 3rd party with visibility to the network traffic will be able to see.
- CaptSpify 10y agoWhat about the conversations? That's where all the juicy data is stored.
- Sylos 10y agoBecause they are not the same company. They were specifically kept as separate companies and the deal at the time would have probably been stopped by law enforcement, if it wouldn't have been this way.
- Grangar 10y agoThose applications you mentioned all have a different purpose. WA and FB share the same: communication. Effectively they have almost everyone in their ecosystem now which (hopefully) is an antitrust case waiting to happen.
- rawstar11 10y agoHow to install WhatsApp on your Windows, Linux and Mac http://www.tricksonnet.com/how-to/install-whatsapp-windows-linux-mac/ http://www.tricksonnet.com/how-to/install-whatsapp-windows-l...
- raverbashing 10y agoSomething 'funny' about new Fb messenger version is that it steals your SMSs from your inbox automatically Yes, you can opt out, AFTER it read your unread SMSs
- mariusavram 10y agoReality is many don't even care :(
- hocuspocus 10y agoOutside the US, many don't really use SMS ;)
- Ntrails 10y agoI find it really unlikely that iOS would let them do that given how tightly coupled iMessage and SMS are?
- raverbashing 10y agoI saw this behaviour on Android
- user5994461 10y agoWhile we are on the topic. Once you install facebook messenger, it steals all your contacts information and their numbers. It's been doing that for many years and there never was any option to prevent it.
- reitanqild 10y agoAnybody feels for discussing the actual meat of the post (consumer watchdogs actually threatening to sue Facebook) instead of discussing the alternatives or the lack of proper encryption in Telegram yet again? I for one am very happy to see this, both because it might teach Facebook and others a valuable lesson about messing with European consumers and because I used to love the old Whatsapp.
- bad_user 10y agoIn all fairness, the old WhatsApp did not have end to end encryption. And the partnership with Open Whisper Systems for implementing that has been announced after the acquisition announcement. It was probably planned in advanced, but it was developed and deployed during Facebook's ownership. And I know that the old WhatsApp was promising privacy and a no ads business model, but you can't really promise privacy while unencrypted chat messages are flowing through your servers. That said, Facebook can still violate people's privacy just by having access to the metadata and I hope such lawsuit will revert this decision, at least in the EU.
- iaw 10y agoA few thoughts: * Encryption is one possible response to the broader concern around what companies are doing with user data * The broader concern, what are companies doing with our data, is often only spoken of from the consumer perspective. Consumers don't want liberties taken with their personal information, the nightmare scenario is that no one has privacy. * From a business perspective: what should FB and WhatsApp do? People are accustomed to getting free services on the internet, it's been that way since the beginning, but these services have always cost someone something. It's not feasible to charge for most messaging services due to competitive reasons. * On the one side we have a nightmare scenario that no one wants, on the other we have the realistic economics of providing a service. Is there a compromise where the consumers can trust the providers to not harm them while still allowing the providers to make money? As an aside: Telegram is not, and never will-be, a secure platform as has been detailed on HN by cryptographic experts when the service first launched.
- amelius 10y ago
- thr0waway1239 10y agoIf there was ever a case for anti-trust folks to step in and break a larger entity into two separate entities, this would be it. I still have no clue how this deal got ignored by the anti-trust folks, especially after they saw the price tag.
- bedros 10y agosimple, facebook gives backdoor access to all their user's data to all governments. It's a win-win situation for facebook and every country FB operates in.