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When I was at unnamed major financial institution, we were ordered to stop using WhatsApp, but it had nothing to do with security and everything to do with avoi

When I was at unnamed major financial institution, we were ordered to stop using WhatsApp, but it had nothing to do with security and everything to do with avoiding even the possibility of the appearance of backroom dealing or production avoidance in the event of subpoena. Maybe the truth has more to do with that, or maybe not, what do I know, who are all you people anyway, and why am I posting here?

Marsymars 1y ago
WhatsApp also feels... tonally weird to use at a serious company, like in the same way it would feel weird to be using snapchat for team meetings.
- LgLasagnaModel 1y ago
  Totally agree. Now let me go play with this model I got off of Hugging Face
- oceansky 1y ago
  WhatsApp is already the de facto communication channel in a lot of countries. In Brazil even subpoenas can be sent via WhatsApp.
  - BeetleB 1y ago
    Heh. I have a friend here in the US. His father passed away in his home country. No will. The whole family needed to show up in court for probate, but he could not travel at that time. The court: "No problem, just join the session on video using WhatsApp"
    - oceansky 1y ago
      Really? Remote court sessions are usually on Google Meet or Zoom
      - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
        It sounds like the court they are referring to is in the "home country". The friend whose father passed is in the US but the "home country" is where the father passed.
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    Yeah it's the de facto communication method for personal communication. I have never worked at a company where people use WhatsApp to communicate. It's always Slack or Teams or Mattermost.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  i feel the same way about so many government departments switching to X as a primary public communications platform instead of... you know, the open web (with distribution to downstream closed platforms), as they always have. it just reeks of unseriousness.
- scrubs 1y ago
  Right? If you use snap chat for meetings emojis, "dude", "bro", "like then he said, and i was like..." etc would be the communication denominator. It'd be fun, silly, and stupid
- pjc50 1y ago
  The UK conservative government ran a lot of meetings on whatsapp because they believed it was secure and unarchived, i.e. could escape the normal retention requirements. Of course what happened is that once the chat got large enough and the government fractious enough, people started leaking messages by screenshot. When trying to avoid subpoenas of data on the device itself, it's important to frequently "lose" the phone with the messages on.
GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
i heard (anecdotally) that wall street used to run on Yahoo IM - fascinating. do you know if that extended into your previous employer?
- theodric 1y ago
  Not while I was there, anyway. The corporate image was so locked down that only named binaries would run, and Internet access was heavily filtered and MITM'd for inspection/retention. We didn't even have a shitposting channel. All the juicy stuff happened over the phone, because most people weren't recorded apart from traders and those adjacent to them (and you'd know if they were recorded because of the IVR announcement preceding their join).
kube-system 1y ago
> nothing to do with security and everything to do with avoiding even the possibility of the appearance of backroom dealing or production avoidance in the event of subpoena But that is a concern of information security. Compliance is often part of this calculus, and many on this forum get wrapped around the axle thinking it's always about cryptography or something. Encryption is only a small part of the broader practice of information security.
reillyse 1y ago
Makes sense, there are lots of requirements for communication retention in financial institutions. If I recall the phone lines are permanently recorded on trading desks by regulators so if anything does happen they have all the info... it's why socializing in person is such a big part of being a trader.
immibis 1y ago
That's why they used TeleMessage's modified version, which saves all logs to fulfill transparency requirements. They were also hacked and leaked hundreds of GBs of messages.

Marsymars 1y ago

WhatsApp also feels... tonally weird to use at a serious company, like in the same way it would feel weird to be using snapchat for team meetings.

LgLasagnaModel 1y ago
Totally agree. Now let me go play with this model I got off of Hugging Face
oceansky 1y ago
WhatsApp is already the de facto communication channel in a lot of countries. In Brazil even subpoenas can be sent via WhatsApp.
- BeetleB 1y ago
  Heh. I have a friend here in the US. His father passed away in his home country. No will. The whole family needed to show up in court for probate, but he could not travel at that time. The court: "No problem, just join the session on video using WhatsApp"
  - oceansky 1y ago
    Really? Remote court sessions are usually on Google Meet or Zoom
    - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 1y ago
      It sounds like the court they are referring to is in the "home country". The friend whose father passed is in the US but the "home country" is where the father passed.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  Yeah it's the de facto communication method for personal communication. I have never worked at a company where people use WhatsApp to communicate. It's always Slack or Teams or Mattermost.
GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
i feel the same way about so many government departments switching to X as a primary public communications platform instead of... you know, the open web (with distribution to downstream closed platforms), as they always have. it just reeks of unseriousness.
scrubs 1y ago
Right? If you use snap chat for meetings emojis, "dude", "bro", "like then he said, and i was like..." etc would be the communication denominator. It'd be fun, silly, and stupid
pjc50 1y ago
The UK conservative government ran a lot of meetings on whatsapp because they believed it was secure and unarchived, i.e. could escape the normal retention requirements. Of course what happened is that once the chat got large enough and the government fractious enough, people started leaking messages by screenshot. When trying to avoid subpoenas of data on the device itself, it's important to frequently "lose" the phone with the messages on.

GuinansEyebrows 1y ago

i heard (anecdotally) that wall street used to run on Yahoo IM - fascinating. do you know if that extended into your previous employer?

theodric 1y ago
Not while I was there, anyway. The corporate image was so locked down that only named binaries would run, and Internet access was heavily filtered and MITM'd for inspection/retention. We didn't even have a shitposting channel. All the juicy stuff happened over the phone, because most people weren't recorded apart from traders and those adjacent to them (and you'd know if they were recorded because of the IVR announcement preceding their join).

kube-system 1y ago

> nothing to do with security and everything to do with avoiding even the possibility of the appearance of backroom dealing or production avoidance in the event of subpoena But that is a concern of information security. Compliance is often part of this calculus, and many on this forum get wrapped around the axle thinking it's always about cryptography or something. Encryption is only a small part of the broader practice of information security.

reillyse 1y ago

Makes sense, there are lots of requirements for communication retention in financial institutions. If I recall the phone lines are permanently recorded on trading desks by regulators so if anything does happen they have all the info... it's why socializing in person is such a big part of being a trader.

immibis 1y ago

That's why they used TeleMessage's modified version, which saves all logs to fulfill transparency requirements. They were also hacked and leaked hundreds of GBs of messages.