9 ms·

This looks equally bad on the EU, that they lacked the foresight to see that phone numbers in the WhatsApp database could be matched with phone numbers in the F

This looks equally bad on the EU, that they lacked the foresight to see that phone numbers in the WhatsApp database could be matched with phone numbers in the Facebook database.

kuzmin 10y ago
If you read the case decision, specifically paragraphs 137 - 140 it becomes even more ridiculous: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases/decisions/m7217_20141003_20310_3962132_EN.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases/decisions/m721... This quote sticks out as a bit of an exaggeration regarding the difficulty of this operation: "Notably, integration of WhatsApp's and Facebook's networks would require matching WhatsApp users' profiles with their profiles on Facebook (or vice versa). This would be complicated without the users' involvement since Facebook and WhatsApp use different unique user identifiers: Facebook ID and mobile phone number, respectively." However, after reading this I feel like the decision focused mostly on the possibility of Facebook merging WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger into a unified communications platform. This feels different to me than merging user-ids over platforms to improve targeted ads. But IANAL, and there are probably documents that I have missed.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  The quote basically says that this task is complicated because it requires an equivalent of a SQL one-liner that any CS undergrad should be able to write. Where would Facebook/WhatsApp find experts that good?
  - evgen 10y ago
    Facebook uids based on email address, WhatsApp on phone number. Please show me the SQL one-liner to join those tables...
    - parthdesai 10y ago
      Select * from fb_users join wp_users on wp_users.id = fb_users.phone_number A really basic query that will give you all the fb users who have listed their phone number. Also i just realized while typing this, i think fb started allowing logging in using your phone number around the time they bought whatsapp. So even the profiles that didn't give their phone number to fb, they could get it via this logging system. ( I guess i was a victim of that)
      - TeMPOraL 10y ago
        Exactly what I had in mind. You could also complement it with phone numbers of people with 2FA enabled.
      - evgen 10y ago
        FB does not require phone numbers so you are just decorating with data that most users do not provide to FB. Not the same thing. Not saying FB could not join the tables given how much data they have, but it is not nearly as simple as this.
        parthdesai 10y ago
        And that's why i said users who have listed their phone number. They can get phone number from users who use their phone number to log in but not have listed it in their profile (me), people who have enabled 2FA or from messenger. It's just a simple sql join. Ofcourse not at FB scale but this is me thinking about this problem for 10 seconds and also i'm in probably not even as intelligent as the dumbest guy working at fb.
        pzh 10y ago
        And then there are people who just use a Google Voice number on Whatsapp instead of a real phone number, and many don't even have a phone number listed on Facebook. I'm actually surprised that anybody would give their real phone number to Facebook, Whatsapp, or any of the other "social networks"...
  - kuzmin 10y ago
    Yeah, this would be really simple, and even without this, I do not believe that fingerprinting the phones and using that as an ID to join identities is that complex these days?
- hobarrera 10y ago
  > This would be complicated without the users' involvement since Facebook and WhatsApp use different unique user identifiers: Facebook ID and mobile phone number, respectively. For some time now, facebook has been requiring a phone number to register. In some cases, they don't ask for one until you try to add people, or something alike. If you use Facebook Messenger (with no facebook account), you can sign up using ONLY you phone number. This was just a plain lie.
Fnoord 10y ago
Oh, the EU knew it could happen; they were told it wouldn't happen. We need to operate on some basic level of common trust. If you wanna do business in the EU, you need to play by the rules. As it turns out, not only did it happen, the software/tech to make it happen was already ready! That makes a pretty strong case against Facebook's intentions. I actually would agree that it was in hindsight stupid because of Facebook's business model. Why else would they want to buy WhatsApp other than profiling and spying? Ideally, we don't even want corporations to have such huge amounts of data on us but we're not on that level yet. We're still too ignorant on that one. More Bad Things (tm) must happen first.
- gooseus 10y ago
  > ... when the Mark Zuckerberg-run company claimed that it wouldn't be able to knit together user IDs, thereby combining the data of the two services. > ... in which it is alleged that the free content ad network failed to disclose that "the technical possibility of automatically matching Facebook users' IDs with WhatsApp users' IDs already existed" at the time of the merger. Seems like the issue is specifically about them saying they couldn't do it, rather than wouldn't do it. Though I would assume that a 30 min consultation with any competent technical person would give rise to a dozen different ways in which it COULD be done... device/ad ids, emails, phone numbers or even just correlating geo data over some amount of time would all be trivial ways to relate the two databases together.
  - Fnoord 10y ago
    > Seems like the issue is specifically about them saying they couldn't do it, rather than wouldn't do it. Yes, I was wrong, I thought the EU was told by Facebook that Facebook would not do it, while they knew it could be done. We are arguing semantics though. If someone asks you wether you would commit a crime (e.g. murder someone), and you reply "I can't", and then said someone lets you pass, that does not give you a blank cheque to commit said crime. "Wouldn't" makes no difference here. If anything, "couldn't" sounds more authoritative because even if you'd want to, you argue you can't whereas the other one is solely based on trust. Regardless, arguing over that attempts to draw attention away that it did happen. Second, we must not forget the EU is not asking a random stranger about it (or well, they were, see below); they were asking those with the know-how themselves, Facebook and WhatsApp. > Though I would assume that a 30 min consultation with any competent technical person would give rise to a dozen different ways in which it COULD be done... Competitors and customers of Facebook and WhatsApp were broadly inquired by the EU before the acquisition was finalised [1]. "[...] The questionnaire inquires about what a merged entity could do with customers' data, and how that could affect advertising services, in particular the effectiveness of ads over both mobile devices such as smartphones and on computers. "In your view, what would be the likely impact on WhatsApp and its user base if post-transaction WhatsApp… were to start collecting increased amount of data about its users (e.g. user location, age, gender, message content, etc.)?" the questionnaire asks. It also probes the growing overlap between social networks and messaging services, as companies scramble to make the most advantageous possible use of consumers' data. "Which of the following websites/apps in your view can be described as a provider of social networking services? Please tick as many boxes as you consider appropriate," the commission asks, before listing dozens of services including Flickr, Foursquare, Google+, InterNations, LinkedIn, Myspace, Meetup, Tumblr, Twitter, Skyrock, Pinterest, Ask.FM and Spotbros. [...]" If your argument is that the acquisition should've never happened there have been multiple points of failure, but its too easy to point it all at the EU (if not merely for the fact that they weren't the ones who broke the law in this instance). I don't know if the details of these inquiries are public, I suspect not. [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-sends-questionnaire-to-rivals-over-facebook-deal-with-whatsapp-1409577419 http://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-sends-questionnaire-to-rivals...

This looks equally bad on the EU, that they lacked the foresight to see that phone numbers in the WhatsApp database could be matched with phone numbers in the Facebook database.

kuzmin 10y ago

If you read the case decision, specifically paragraphs 137 - 140 it becomes even more ridiculous: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases/decisions/m7217_20141003_20310_3962132_EN.pdf http://ec.europa.eu/competition/mergers/cases/decisions/m721... This quote sticks out as a bit of an exaggeration regarding the difficulty of this operation: "Notably, integration of WhatsApp's and Facebook's networks would require matching WhatsApp users' profiles with their profiles on Facebook (or vice versa). This would be complicated without the users' involvement since Facebook and WhatsApp use different unique user identifiers: Facebook ID and mobile phone number, respectively." However, after reading this I feel like the decision focused mostly on the possibility of Facebook merging WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger into a unified communications platform. This feels different to me than merging user-ids over platforms to improve targeted ads. But IANAL, and there are probably documents that I have missed.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
The quote basically says that this task is complicated because it requires an equivalent of a SQL one-liner that any CS undergrad should be able to write. Where would Facebook/WhatsApp find experts that good?
- evgen 10y ago
  Facebook uids based on email address, WhatsApp on phone number. Please show me the SQL one-liner to join those tables...
  - parthdesai 10y ago
    Select * from fb_users join wp_users on wp_users.id = fb_users.phone_number A really basic query that will give you all the fb users who have listed their phone number. Also i just realized while typing this, i think fb started allowing logging in using your phone number around the time they bought whatsapp. So even the profiles that didn't give their phone number to fb, they could get it via this logging system. ( I guess i was a victim of that)
    - TeMPOraL 10y ago
      Exactly what I had in mind. You could also complement it with phone numbers of people with 2FA enabled.
    - evgen 10y ago
      FB does not require phone numbers so you are just decorating with data that most users do not provide to FB. Not the same thing. Not saying FB could not join the tables given how much data they have, but it is not nearly as simple as this.
      - parthdesai 10y ago
        And that's why i said users who have listed their phone number. They can get phone number from users who use their phone number to log in but not have listed it in their profile (me), people who have enabled 2FA or from messenger. It's just a simple sql join. Ofcourse not at FB scale but this is me thinking about this problem for 10 seconds and also i'm in probably not even as intelligent as the dumbest guy working at fb.
        pzh 10y ago
        And then there are people who just use a Google Voice number on Whatsapp instead of a real phone number, and many don't even have a phone number listed on Facebook. I'm actually surprised that anybody would give their real phone number to Facebook, Whatsapp, or any of the other "social networks"...
- kuzmin 10y ago
  Yeah, this would be really simple, and even without this, I do not believe that fingerprinting the phones and using that as an ID to join identities is that complex these days?
hobarrera 10y ago
> This would be complicated without the users' involvement since Facebook and WhatsApp use different unique user identifiers: Facebook ID and mobile phone number, respectively. For some time now, facebook has been requiring a phone number to register. In some cases, they don't ask for one until you try to add people, or something alike. If you use Facebook Messenger (with no facebook account), you can sign up using ONLY you phone number. This was just a plain lie.

Fnoord 10y ago

Oh, the EU knew it could happen; they were told it wouldn't happen. We need to operate on some basic level of common trust. If you wanna do business in the EU, you need to play by the rules. As it turns out, not only did it happen, the software/tech to make it happen was already ready! That makes a pretty strong case against Facebook's intentions. I actually would agree that it was in hindsight stupid because of Facebook's business model. Why else would they want to buy WhatsApp other than profiling and spying? Ideally, we don't even want corporations to have such huge amounts of data on us but we're not on that level yet. We're still too ignorant on that one. More Bad Things (tm) must happen first.

gooseus 10y ago
> ... when the Mark Zuckerberg-run company claimed that it wouldn't be able to knit together user IDs, thereby combining the data of the two services. > ... in which it is alleged that the free content ad network failed to disclose that "the technical possibility of automatically matching Facebook users' IDs with WhatsApp users' IDs already existed" at the time of the merger. Seems like the issue is specifically about them saying they couldn't do it, rather than wouldn't do it. Though I would assume that a 30 min consultation with any competent technical person would give rise to a dozen different ways in which it COULD be done... device/ad ids, emails, phone numbers or even just correlating geo data over some amount of time would all be trivial ways to relate the two databases together.
- Fnoord 10y ago
  > Seems like the issue is specifically about them saying they couldn't do it, rather than wouldn't do it. Yes, I was wrong, I thought the EU was told by Facebook that Facebook would not do it, while they knew it could be done. We are arguing semantics though. If someone asks you wether you would commit a crime (e.g. murder someone), and you reply "I can't", and then said someone lets you pass, that does not give you a blank cheque to commit said crime. "Wouldn't" makes no difference here. If anything, "couldn't" sounds more authoritative because even if you'd want to, you argue you can't whereas the other one is solely based on trust. Regardless, arguing over that attempts to draw attention away that it did happen. Second, we must not forget the EU is not asking a random stranger about it (or well, they were, see below); they were asking those with the know-how themselves, Facebook and WhatsApp. > Though I would assume that a 30 min consultation with any competent technical person would give rise to a dozen different ways in which it COULD be done... Competitors and customers of Facebook and WhatsApp were broadly inquired by the EU before the acquisition was finalised [1]. "[...] The questionnaire inquires about what a merged entity could do with customers' data, and how that could affect advertising services, in particular the effectiveness of ads over both mobile devices such as smartphones and on computers. "In your view, what would be the likely impact on WhatsApp and its user base if post-transaction WhatsApp… were to start collecting increased amount of data about its users (e.g. user location, age, gender, message content, etc.)?" the questionnaire asks. It also probes the growing overlap between social networks and messaging services, as companies scramble to make the most advantageous possible use of consumers' data. "Which of the following websites/apps in your view can be described as a provider of social networking services? Please tick as many boxes as you consider appropriate," the commission asks, before listing dozens of services including Flickr, Foursquare, Google+, InterNations, LinkedIn, Myspace, Meetup, Tumblr, Twitter, Skyrock, Pinterest, Ask.FM and Spotbros. [...]" If your argument is that the acquisition should've never happened there have been multiple points of failure, but its too easy to point it all at the EU (if not merely for the fact that they weren't the ones who broke the law in this instance). I don't know if the details of these inquiries are public, I suspect not. [1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-sends-questionnaire-to-rivals-over-facebook-deal-with-whatsapp-1409577419 http://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-sends-questionnaire-to-rivals...