4 ms·
Sometimes it is more important what a post like this doesn't say. "You don’t have to give us your name and we don’t ask for your email address. We don’t know y
by mirkules 13y ago
Sometimes it is more important what a post like this doesn't say.
"You don’t have to give us your name and we don’t ask for your email address. We don’t know your birthday. We don’t know your home address. We don’t know where you work. We don’t know your likes, what you search for on the internet or collect your GPS location. None of that data has ever been collected and stored by WhatsApp, and we really have no plans to change that."
Great: they don't take my PII - but a person can easily be de-anonymized with just meta-data.
In addition, nowhere does it say "we won't read your messages" or "we won't sell your conversations". I think they are interested in much more than just meta-data. If I were Facebook, I would be licking my chops at the prospect of access to the mountain of saved private conversations.
- mattlutze 13y agoThis jumped out at me as well. In his list, they don't-not collect A. my phone number, and B. my entire message history. Certainly he knows that our phone number is PII enough. It's trivial for someone with the means to tie a cell number back to a person, and only slightly less trivial to look at timestamps and cross-reference tower locations and messages to have a quality bit of intel. If he was truly about this "we're not the Stasi" bit, I'd imagine we'd see some measure of assurance they don't store messages. But, then again I don't know that the service would have been worth 19B USD without those.
- rurounijones 13y agoand your phone number is PII that Facebook asks you to register with them! So...yea, not exactly anonymous.
- mattlutze 13y agoI don't know that Facebook requires a phone number, but yes definitely anyone that has given it out has given them that direct link.
- addandsubtract 13y agoFacebook started asking for your phone number a few years ago. It's required for all new signups and existing users are asked to provide one (to continue) as well, afaik. And then there's the Facebook app on mobile phones that reads everyones phone number out of their address book.