Facebook Ordered to Stop Collecting Data on WhatsApp Users in Germany

A former colleague of mine who was a distinguished academic and successful tech executive grew up in East Germany. After the Berlin wall fell, he was able to enter the building where they kept the dossiers. He found his own file and was astounded by the information they had on him. His friends, his work, his habits. Photos of himself going about his business. His social circles. His friends were equally shocked by the collection of the most trivial details. They weren&#x27;t fomenting revolution or doing anything remotely disruptive. They thought nobody would pay much attention to a bunch of harmless random students. They were wrong.<p>Memories like this still have force in Europe. I have to believe that their history makes many Europeans queasy about the collection of mass information. It is also easy to see how these laws could be exploited by large companies in Europe for their own commercial interest. Still, these laws have a moral force and US companies are stupid to try to circumvent, belittle, or ignore them. The desire for privacy has deep roots; it is not a nuisance to be swatted away on the path towards maximal profits.

You can go get an off-contract sim card, use it on a <i>clean</i> Android, create a fake gmail account in order to download and install Whatsapp. Now you make connections (you add family and friends to your contacts) and start communicating. By now both FB and Google know who you are simply b&#x2F;c other people in your network, not concerned with privacy, have you saved on their contacts list, pressumably under your first and last name. Using <i>analytics data</i> that you inadvertedly share through your usage habits, both companies build a detailed online persona that will never be forgotten. B&#x2F;c we are creatures of habit and social bonds, it is quite easy to determine who you are and what you do, by indirect information like your locations (gps), connections (contacts), online presence (IPs), browsing habits, etc.<p>THERE IS NO ESCAPE. Unless you do what they themselves say you should do if you do not agree with the terms: don&#x27;t use their services.

Quoting from the link:<p><pre><code> Facebook said on Tuesday, after the order had been issued, that it had complied with Europe’s privacy rules and that it was willing to work with the German regulator to address its concerns. </code></pre> Two Indian students challenged Facebook on WhatsApp privacy policy changes [0]. The following is what WhatsApp counsel told [1]:<p><pre><code> Using the messaging service is a voluntary decision, we have not forced anybody to use it. Users have an option of opting out of it. </code></pre> Disclaimer: I don&#x27;t have an account on either Facebook or WhatsApp.<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2016-09-20&#x2F;facebook-faces-indian-court-challenge-on-whatsapp-privacy-policy" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bloomberg.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;articles&#x2F;2016-09-20&#x2F;facebook-f...</a><p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mashable.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;23&#x2F;india-delhi-high-court-whatsapp-facebook&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mashable.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;23&#x2F;india-delhi-high-court-whatsa...</a>

Now things are going to get interesting! I completely understand the desire for privacy but I think it&#x27;s unrealistic to expect that Facebook won&#x27;t consolidate its data by user across all their applications. Facebook (and Google, etc.) are now in the same business as the credit reporting agencies ... You are their only product.<p>My hope is that the increasing outrage will drive users to one of the secure messaging applications.<p>Disclaimer: I have neither a Facebook nor a WhatsApp account.

Regardless of how this ends up working or being decided, I&#x27;m very happy to see such discussion occurring. The large scale collection of data on users has benefits both nominally &#x27;good&#x27; and &#x27;evil&#x27; - from app UX to advertising profits. But equally interesting are the potential drawbacks involving privacy concerns, and lack of user awareness.<p>It is this last point that I find best remedied by articles like this appearing in widely available media publications. When a discussion is on HN I might learn a lot and reflect upon my choices. When the nytimes and German privacy commissioner start a conversation, I consider that even more valuable.<p>Hopefully a balanced outcome will occur, but I don&#x27;t see that as important as the inevitable education that comes with such public debate.

<i>“It has to be their decision, whether they want to connect their account with Facebook,” Johannes Caspar, the Hamburg data protection commissioner, said in a statement. “Therefore, Facebook has to ask for their permission in advance. This has not happened.”</i><p>That&#x27;s a fair point. I don&#x27;t use WhatsApp, so did it asked to accept new privacy policy, terms &amp; conditions or smth? Anyway, I&#x27;m happy to see that institutions in Europe take a stance against big corps to protect its users lately.

It’s unfortunately a good example of how easy it is for products to change: in our current system, any nice thing is just one buyout away from becoming something entirely different.<p>It’s a bit like when a restaurant starts out good or bad, and changes under new management: it’s “the same” restaurant and yet it’s really <i>not</i> the same anymore, and consumers may or may not have gotten the memo. And it almost doesn’t matter if it goes through 3 managers, from good to bad and back to good, as the brand has already been tarnished and the damage is done.<p>I believe strongly that the hard work of hundreds of people shouldn’t be easy to screw up just because the wrong people bought you out, and yet this happens frequently: good projects are killed, and excellent work may end up going nowhere. This is why open-source projects have so much value: they are very difficult to screw up because there is always the option to fork it from a good spot and keep all the good work alive.

While Germany is protecting their citizens from facebook&#x27;s shady privacy policies, The US leaders argue about who has more stamina.<p>I&#x27;m very happy paying 1$ a year for privacy and security.<p>Whatsapp just re-iterated that they will say anything to fool its users and break their promise.<p>Facebook should definitely get a fine in billions and should be made to apologize publicly for breaching privacy.

Hamburg&#x27;s data commissioner is influential because he is very active and outspoken (the previous one was even more so), but that also means that he&#x27;s a bit fast and loose.<p>His opinions and rulings are not always held up by the courts, and the other states&#x27; data commissioners (there are fifteen more, plus a federal one) quite often don&#x27;t agree with him.

This could send shockwaves throughout the entire web.<p>If the premise of the complaint is that users connecting with a facebook account didn&#x27;t explicitly give permission to use the data associated with it then I imagine a swooping change will have to happen with all services that use Facebook, google sign on as they&#x27;ll have to explicitly gain user&#x27;s consent to use the exact information they&#x27;re mining.<p>You might go, oh well they already do, I doubt it honestly and they likely rely on implicit consent but I can see this having major shockwaves

This is an important discussion, but nobody seems to be asking the question - what is the end goal here for either side?<p>Lets take the extremes as a beginning..<p>1. Lets assume every action a person takes is logged. That means every keystroke, cough, heartbeat, meal, path taken etc... for everyone on the planet is tracked somewhere in some system.<p>2. On the flip side lets say that nothing is logged and we stop using systems that track our behavior altogether.<p>- What are the costs and benefits to either extreme and where would the people of the future prefer to lie on that extreme? Is there a realistic middle ground?<p>If the question is about informed consent then I am afraid it&#x27;s a losing battle. Consumers do not understand even the basic externalities of different behaviors - and even if you printed them on the label it would mostly be noise. So to expect that people will understand all possible negative externalities with sharing data is a bridge too far.<p>I personally think that more accurate lifestyle data, provided by users to Machine systems, with the purpose of affecting behaviors, based on stated and revealed preferences of the users would be the best long term outcome. Offloading decision making to a machine is the best decision we will ever make as a species - and that requires a lot of training data and other data to optimize.<p>Otherwise we might as well just go back to everyone being a farmer.

This is why I like the Germans so much. They just do this stuff.

Yesterday, I opened whatsapp on my phone. During the last weeks I have been clicking on the `Not Now` option when whatsapp gave me the new terms and conditions. Yesterday, the not now option did not exist. This is not good.

How does this work, if I travel to Germany and use WhatsApp is Facebook compelled to delete all the shared data they have on me?

Can everyone just please install Wire [1]:<p>* free,<p>* end-to-end encrypted<p>* text and voice chat<p>* with pictures and group chat and what have you,<p>* using the Signal&#x2F;OpenWhisper protocol,<p>* with desktop and web clients,<p>* open source (GPLv3, and on github [2]),<p>* signup with phone number or email,<p>* based in Switzerland,<p>* what else can you ask for?<p>Signal itself of course is pretty good, secure (recommended by Ed Snowden, famously), but not quite as fully featured it seems to me.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wire.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;wire.com</a><p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;wireapp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;wireapp</a><p>EDIT: added license, web client

If I were German I would feel pretty good that my government was willing to stand up for my privacy. In an era when both civil liberties and expectations of reasonable privacy seem to be falling by the wayside, even in countries that purport to espouse such principles I think this is pretty awesome.

In India related <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mashable.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;23&#x2F;india-delhi-high-court-whatsapp-facebook&#x2F;#S_DrdkKv.kqo" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;mashable.com&#x2F;2016&#x2F;09&#x2F;23&#x2F;india-delhi-high-court-whatsa...</a>

Remember &quot;What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?&quot;. I look forward to more countries declaring themselves high-privacy zones to attract tourists.<p>Except for the privacy intrusion from all the other tourists, I suppose :-)

Facebook asked WhatsApp users to give consent before collecting data, which some did. Why should the government intervine between consenting adults agreeing on a contract willfully? Isn&#x27;t this the definition of tyranny and why we oppose things such as the war on drugs?

There is one funny one: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ndtv.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;why-i-took-whatsapp-to-court-by-a-19-year-old-student-1466535" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ndtv.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;why-i-took-whatsapp-to-court-by-a-1...</a>

There is such a thing as being a good citizen on the net and part of that should be that these privacy violating features be &quot;opt in&quot; so that people can use them if they want to.<p>Maybe NY State where I live will pass some privacy laws.

I would like to see a federal Staute inacted regarding the collection of user data in the US. Enacted quickly!<p>Something on the lines of don&#x27;t collect any data, besides name, password, email address. This information can never be sold.<p>I have weird feeling, in the near future, we will find that information&#x2F;data has been abused. No just abused by marketing&#x2F;big data, etc..<p>And I&#x27;m not even arguing about the obvious--personal privacy. Although personal privacy should be the number one reason for this hypothetical statute.<p>I have a feeling, it will be the next big financial insider trading scandal. It will involve people we talk about here-- Google&#x2F;Bing&#x2F;FB insiders(the ones who can see individual IP&#x27;s, and their data.), took all that information, and traded stock upon it.<p>I have a hard time believing every email that Warren Buffet&#x2F;George Sorrows&#x2F;every sussessful trader makes isn&#x27;t looked at by someone. And it&#x27;s not just email; it collating search histories, in order to get a &quot;feeling&quot; of where the money to is to be made.<p>They are then using that info. to invest in stocks, bonds, real estate, etc..<p>And yes, they will claim we don&#x27;t care about getting insider info. on investments--we make a killing selling the data to marketers. Why would we do such a thing? Because you can. I would have a hard time not looking at that information, and I don&#x27;t have a penny to gamble.<p>I think it will be a huge story.<p>(Edit to a legitimate question about the poor websites that depend on advertising.)<p>Yes--I didn&#x27;t bring up advertising. They could advertise like the old days, like newspapers did. They just couldn&#x27;t target market their advertising--like they presently do at nausium. I still think they would make their nut. They would still be winners! And yes--I would pay for the right service, if they couldn&#x27;t manage to compete by being hobbled with not targeted advertising. I paid for many websites before Google made advertising a science.<p>My post has nothing to do with advertising. I get advertising. Just leave my detailed, personal info. out of it.)

I don&#x27;t understand why the state has to become involved. Let the free market work and people decide for themselves.<p>I stopped using WhatsApp the moment I read that facebook bought it.