2 ms·

I would be very careful about making such statements. It is absolutely true that WhatsApp collects your contacts' phone numbers and your social graph. Unless W

by toast0 2y ago

I would be very careful about making such statements. It is absolutely true that WhatsApp collects your contacts' phone numbers and your social graph. Unless WhatsApp has stopped doing that, in which case it should make a big announcement. I don't know if the social graph is used outside WhatsApp, so that part may not be true, but it is within the privacy policy to do so (at least the one I see, EU may have a different one), the privacy policy says WhatsApp may share information with Meta to among other things: > improving their services and your experiences using them, such as making suggestions for you (for example, of friends or group connections, or of interesting content), personalizing features and content, helping you complete purchases and transactions, and showing relevant offers and ads across the Meta Company Products; And there have been waves of policy updates, notifications etc specifically to get these terms. That doesn't mean Find my Friends gets this information, but I thought there was at least discussion of it.

dcsommer 2y ago
This is not me making some grand new commitment. It's right in the privacy policy and also summarized here: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1303762270462331 https://faq.whatsapp.com/1303762270462331 > We need your contacts to provide the service, but don’t share your contacts with Meta. I'm frustrated that people even at HN allow themselves to indulge in conspiracy theories that would be immediately whistle-blowed or reported on. There are thousands of people that work on or with WhatsApp and related products within Meta who would notice, not to mention all the data separation audits that happen.
- noprocrasted 2y ago
  > We need your contacts to provide the service, but don’t share your contacts with Meta. There are plenty of ways to make this statement 100% factual and still effectively leak the user's address book, at least in a form useful to Meta. It is true that Meta doesn't need your raw contacts, it just needs certain inferences made from them. WhatsApp can perfectly well make those inferences and only share those, with some trivially-reversed "anonymization" on top as an extra layer of obfuscation.

by toast0 2y ago

dcsommer 2y ago

This is not me making some grand new commitment. It's right in the privacy policy and also summarized here: https://faq.whatsapp.com/1303762270462331 https://faq.whatsapp.com/1303762270462331 > We need your contacts to provide the service, but don’t share your contacts with Meta. I'm frustrated that people even at HN allow themselves to indulge in conspiracy theories that would be immediately whistle-blowed or reported on. There are thousands of people that work on or with WhatsApp and related products within Meta who would notice, not to mention all the data separation audits that happen.

noprocrasted 2y ago
> We need your contacts to provide the service, but don’t share your contacts with Meta. There are plenty of ways to make this statement 100% factual and still effectively leak the user's address book, at least in a form useful to Meta. It is true that Meta doesn't need your raw contacts, it just needs certain inferences made from them. WhatsApp can perfectly well make those inferences and only share those, with some trivially-reversed "anonymization" on top as an extra layer of obfuscation.