WhatsApp's illegal
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@stillwater said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@mrl said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@stillwater said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@mrl Did you even read what I wrote?
You wrote something else from what you meant?
If you read exactly what I meant then I'm not sure where you got the idea I don't care about privacy. That is the exact opposite of what I've been saying.
Just find one of discussions I mentioned if you are curious about arguments of either side. They won't change your mind, whichever side you're on, believe me.
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The best I've done so far to deal with all this shit is
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I don't do photographs. Nope the fuck away. The most mundane shit gets tagged on facebook my an idiot friend or a colleague.
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I have a lot of throw away numbers and throw away emails for almost everything including banks. I use my personal number only for the closest of family and friends preceded by a 132132131 hour lecture on privacy.
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@stillwater said in WhatsApp's illegal:
Read my post above about how I went out of my way to protect my privacy.
I read it, yes. So how did you prevent your friends and acquaintances from sharing your phone number with WhatsApp?
But to indulge you on your thread derailment:
@stillwater said in WhatsApp's illegal:
What I don't get is privacy issues when it comes to location tracking and targeted ads.
What follows is my own take of things, you are welcome to disagree or not consider these things relevant. It still is my opinion and I haven't heard any serious arguments against it yet.
Mostly I'm concerned about concentration of power. Knowledge is power, remember? Having a huge database of habits, common locations, ideals etc. of a great many people is an immensely powerful thing, even if the holders swear that "they'll never use it for bad things". That may the case today, but what about in 10 years? 20 years? Who will be in power by then? What will they do with all that data people have gotten accustomed to sharing?
I also believe that this is already being abused. Now targeted ads to sell stuff may be relatively benign1, but things change when it's about political advertising. Never has it been so easy to just conveniently sway public opinion into the direction some powerful actor prefers, just for the brief time required to change the results of the impending vote / election. This undermines the very foundation of democracy.
1 On a side note, my personal opinion is that advertising is evil in itself. Its declared primary purpose is making people feel bad about not having stuff. Most people don't actually need the stuff they are now feeling bad about not having. Thus advertising makes people's lives more miserable, and making advertising more effective is making more people's lives more miserable.
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@mrl said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@stillwater said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@mrl said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@stillwater said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@mrl Did you even read what I wrote?
You wrote something else from what you meant?
If you read exactly what I meant then I'm not sure where you got the idea I don't care about privacy. That is the exact opposite of what I've been saying.
Just find one of discussions I mentioned if you are curious about arguments of either side. They won't change your mind, whichever side you're on, believe me.
Im pissed with the whole thing because going out of my way to keep my personal information intact is a pain in the ass I don't want on top of my regular shit. I understand the argument about trading data for free services but I am not really sure what is lurking underneath when it comes to location tracking and targeted ads on my phone just when I look up shit. That's the maximum I can go as far as trading data for services is concerned. If some one knows by experience if that shit is evil I'm going right back to my
without batting an eyelid.
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@ixvedeusi said in WhatsApp's illegal:
I read it, yes. So how did you prevent your friends and acquaintances from sharing your phone number with WhatsApp?
My whatsapp linked phone no. is my throwaway mobile number. I got this number at a time where providing Identification was well...not really 'necessary' here. This is the number I hand out like it's my real number. This is the only thing I could do about it with zero control over how other people share my info.
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That ruling is absolutely retarded.
My address book is stored on Google's and Apple's servers, yet I have not obtained explicit authorization from each and every person in my address book to share their contact details with Google or Apple.
I have authorized Google's Hangouts app to access my contacts, so that it knows who calls or texts my Google Voice number, and I can call or text my contacts by scrolling to or typing their name instead of having to type in their phone number.
I've authorized Google's Mail app to access it for the same reason; it can connect email addresses to my contacts' names.
I've authorized Google's Maps app to access my contacts, so that I can swipe in someone's name and have it give me directions to their house instead of having to type their address.
Under the German court's ruling, these would all be illegal. Any cloud-based address book storage and any apps that require access to your address books would be illegal.
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@gąska GDPR is a shitty law, news at 11:30.
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@anotherusername said in WhatsApp's illegal:
My address book is stored on Google's and Apple's servers, yet I have not obtained explicit authorization from each and every person in my address book to share their contact details with Google or Apple.
Could be (or maybe already is) easily solved by encrypting the address book with your own, private key before uploading.
@anotherusername said in WhatsApp's illegal:
I have authorized Google's Hangouts app to access my contacts, so that it knows who calls or texts my Google Voice number, and I can call or text my contacts by scrolling to or typing their name instead of having to type in their phone number.
I've authorized Google's Mail app to access it for the same reason; it can connect email addresses to my contacts' names.
I've authorized Google's Maps app to access my contacts, so that I can swipe in someone's name and have it give me directions to their house instead of having to type their address.None of this requires uploading your address book to their servers, it could all be done locally on your phone.
@anotherusername said in WhatsApp's illegal:
Under the German court's ruling, these would all be illegal.
And I'm happy it is. I don't see any reason at all why you should be allowed to give my phone number to Google.
The only questionable part of this ruling, IMHO, is that it's essentially the user who is liable, not the company which tricked them into doing the illegal action.
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@ixvedeusi said in WhatsApp's illegal:
Could be (or maybe already is) easily solved by encrypting the address book with your own, private key before uploading.
What would we make threads about if people started doing that? :P
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@ixvedeusi said in WhatsApp's illegal:
And I'm happy it is. I don't see any reason at all why you should be allowed to give my phone number to Google.
Let's pretend it's 1980 for a minute. According to you I would be wrong because I handed over your business card with your phone number on to my secretary to put the number in my Rolodex.
It's not wrong to store phone numbers anywhere in the cloud be it in the Google, MS, Apple contacts thing or whatever. What Whatsapp does is however something different. They take your contacts and match them up with their list. That is how wahtsapp can tell you what other contacts in your address book are using whatsapp. And do fuckall with the data besides that.
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@luhmann said in WhatsApp's illegal:
And do fuckall with the data besides that.
How do we know fo sho tho?
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@stillwater
You don't. That's where that nice throbbing feeling in your bum comes from.
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@luhmann said in WhatsApp's illegal:
I would be wrong because I handed over your business card with your phone number on to my secretary to put the number in my Rolodex.
That depends a lot on the relationship between me, you, and your secretary. If I handed you my business card for business purposes, this would fall under "using the information I provide for the purpose of conducting business with me" and would be OK.
If however we'd have met in a bar, and I gave you my business card so you can call me back and we can hang out together more, I would certainly expect that you'd ask before sharing it with your secretary, which I have no relationship with.
@luhmann said in WhatsApp's illegal:
It's not wrong to store phone numbers anywhere in the cloud be it in the Google, MS, Apple contacts thing or whatever.
It's wrong for you to allow any third party to make whatever use of my phone number without my consent. Always has been. The only thing that has changed recently is the scale of the ramifications.
@luhmann said in WhatsApp's illegal:
That is how wahtsapp can tell you what other contacts in your address book are using whatsapp. And do fuckall with the data besides that.
That's what you say. There's nothing I could find in their ToS which would confirm that.
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@ixvedeusi I don't see any practical way in which a phone number (designed specifically as a public point of contact for an individual) can be private information. If it's private, it loses its entire reason for existence. If you share it with anyone, it's not truly private.
Spammers are almost all already violating laws elsewhere, so all this does is complicate totally ordinary things.
Two can keep a secret, if one of them is dead.
I use facebook because otherwise I'd get phone calls from my parents asking if I'm dead. Even though I have it set to friends only, I still only post things I wouldn't be sad for the whole world to see. In fact, I try not to do things that would be a problem for the whole world to know. That's called good character.
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@gąska said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@ixvedeusi mobile apps scavenge all data they can get hold on with total disregard of any laws whatsoever. News at 11.
And yet, to me, learning this is more interesting than the usual daily news.
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@ixvedeusi said in WhatsApp's illegal:
Could be (or maybe already is) easily solved by encrypting the address book with your own, private key before uploading.
It has to be decrypted in order to display the notification, so I'd need to have an encryption key on all of my devices (including Gmail's web interface), and then I'd have to give that encryption key to Google and trust them not to store it somewhere or use it to look at my contacts list.
For all I know, my contacts are encrypted -- but Google obviously has the keys to decrypt them, because it's transparent to me. (This is actually the case.)
Also, can an app look up the phone number locally before the push notification is displayed to the user, or does that have to be done server-side? I'm actually not sure.
None of this requires uploading your address book to their servers, it could all be done locally on your phone.
It requires me to give the apps permission to access the contacts list; nothing prevents the app from calling home. There is no special "make a copy of your address book and upload it to their server" permission; they either have access to it or they don't.
I don't see any reason at all why you should be allowed to give my phone number to Google.
If I need to carry on communications with you, and Google is facilitating those communications, then Google has to know your phone number. It's pretty much that simple. Google has to know the name I associate with your phone number if Google is to tell me who messaged me, or if I want to contact you and I don't have your number memorized.
You can argue that only the local app should have the access, but again, there's no permission that controls what it can send to some Google server in the cloud. For all practical intents and purposes, authorizing an app to access my contacts list is the same as giving my contacts list to the app's creator.
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@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
I don't see any practical way in which a phone number (designed specifically as a public point of contact for an individual) can be private information. If it's private, it loses its entire reason for existence. If you share it with anyone, it's not truly private.
So are my face, name and address. I'd still like to limit the publication of these to random people as much as possible. There's a continuum between keeping something secret and just giving it to anyone at all. Personally identifying information is somewhere in between. Or would you post your name, address and phone number here? Anyone who can contact you has at least one of those anyway, so what's the problem?
@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
Spammers are almost all already violating laws elsewhere
That doesn't mean I have to make the job any easier for them, and also doesn't mean I have to help entities I directly interact with making it easier for them.
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@ixvedeusi said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
I don't see any practical way in which a phone number (designed specifically as a public point of contact for an individual) can be private information. If it's private, it loses its entire reason for existence. If you share it with anyone, it's not truly private.
So are my face, name and address. I'd still like to limit the publication of these to random people as much as possible. There's a continuum between keeping something secret and just giving it to anyone at all. Personally identifying information is somewhere in between. Or would you post your name, address and phone number here? Anyone who can contact you has at least one of those anyway, so what's the problem?
@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
Spammers are almost all already violating laws elsewhere
That doesn't mean I have to make the job any easier for them, and also doesn't mean I have to help entities I directly interact with making it easier for them.
Look at the username. I do go by my real name here. On purpose.
All these things basically do nothing. They're privacy theater.
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@sockpuppet7 said in WhatsApp's illegal:
Problem is, the network effect on messaging apps and social networks is too strong.
True. Fortunately for me, I'm not aware that anyone I know or care to exchange messages with uses WhatsApp.
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@sockpuppet7 said in WhatsApp's illegal:
I think there should be law limiting the lenght of a TOS, so they get concise and readable. The law should assume nobody reads a TOS that is more than 500 words long, because its not reasonable to expect that.
I think that there first needs to be laws dictating that laws meet those requirements. They're far worse offenders than TOSes or other legal contracts.
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@ixvedeusi said in WhatsApp's illegal:
If however we'd have met in a bar, and I gave you my business card so you can call me back and we can hang out together more, I would certainly expect that you'd ask before sharing it with your secretary, which I have no relationship with.
Except that happened all the fucking time when business cards where a thing.
@ixvedeusi said in WhatsApp's illegal:
It's wrong for you to allow any third party to make whatever use of my phone number without my consent. Always has been. The only thing that has changed recently is the scale of the ramifications.
Phone numbers used to be considered 100% public information. And I don't mean "used to be" like 1890, I mean "used to be" like 1997.
I get a lot of people are concerned about privacy, but it would help their arguments a lot if they realized this concern is a VERY RECENT societal shift. It did not exist in any historical context, and if the guy running WhatsApp is older than, say, 45 he might literally have no idea that the things he's doing you consider wrong. Not because he's an evil horrible villian laughing and cackling, but simply because your mindset changed and he wasn't there when it happened.
For the vast majority of the existence of phone numbers, people wanted other people to have their numbers. They wanted to get called by random people they haven't heard from before. Robo-calling didn't start changing this attitude until the mid-90s or so.
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@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
All these things basically do nothing. They're privacy theater.
And yet, i never got spam messages or phone calls on my mobile phone until the smart phone "all your data are belong to us" era. So I'm sorry but I don't agree on this point.
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@unperverted-vixen Amen. Most of these situations are made worse by the laws. More laws = more loopholes, after all. And with passing bad laws, you end up reducing the scrutiny applied, because "there's a law already, so it must be ok."
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@stillwater said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@sockpuppet7 said in WhatsApp's illegal:
I think there should be law limiting the lenght of a TOS, so they get concise and readable.
This would backfire so bad. The sentences would be more complicated with bigger words to condense all those T&Cs in <500 words. It would get worse.
German law actually has a provision against "surprising and unusual passages" in TOS. That's why they're all basically using the same TOS in Germany - because they know that a court would throw out (and actually has, several times) onerous and one-sided claims in a TOS.
The courts basically said: "You're supposed to make a TOS understandable. If you don't do that they you shouldn't go against the common way of doing that. If you try to hide things in the TOS, however, good luck and we'll slap you around for a bit if we find out."
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@ixvedeusi said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
All these things basically do nothing. They're privacy theater.
And yet, i never got spam messages or phone calls on my phone until the smart phone "all your data are belong to us" era. So I'm sorry but I don't agree on this point.
Those are both related to the spread of processing power. Most spam phone calls are almost literally dialing random numbers (almost, because they're using templates that fit the pattern).
Spam calls to mobile numbers are already illegal in the US with a few exceptions. So if they're buying mobile numbers to spam them, they're already breaking the law. And more laws do very little to stop people, especially if the previous ones aren't enforced very well.
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@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@ixvedeusi I don't see any practical way in which a phone number (designed specifically as a public point of contact for an individual) can be private information. If it's private, it loses its entire reason for existence. If you share it with anyone, it's not truly private.
By that reasoning you should wall off your windows and weld shut the doors to your house.
I think you're confusing "secret" for "private".
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@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
Those are both related to the spread of
processing powerphone numbers. Most spam phone calls are almost literally dialing random numbers (almost, because they're using templates that fit the pattern).It's still much easier if you can just get a list of valid phone numbers from Sources
.@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
So if they're buying mobile numbers to spam them, they're already breaking the law.
And if providers provided more transparency on what they do with phone numbers I provide, maybe there were fewer lists of phone numbers out there to buy.
To be clear, I'm doubtful that laws are the best way to attack these problems. My main issue is not necessarily the lack of laws, because as you said
@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
More laws = more loopholes, after all.
The main problem today is that providers like WhatsApp can get away with clauses like "you'll give us all the phone numbers of all the people you know and we'll do with them whatever we please." and people are OK with this. Everyone either goes "I want my Grumpy Cat" or "can't do anything about it anyway". Guess what, you can, by not accepting these kinds of terms. I for one have ethical issues with clicking "agree" on these terms. Not so much because of my own info, but because I do not believe I have the right to take this decision for someone else.
Yes, I may miss out on some Latest Cool Tech if I refuse to do so. Maybe you consider it not worth this. But if more people thought like me, maybe we could raise awareness on the providers' side that this can be a market differentiator for their products. By saying "can't do anything" and accepting the terms you are in effect condoning them.
The first thing to do about this is IMHO to inform people about what is currently done and actually have a broad public discussion. Say what you want about the GDPR, but if there's one thing to say in its favor is that it has triggered a broader discussion on the subject; and this is mainly because it's too obnoxious to go unnoticed.
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@ixvedeusi I'm sure that if WhatsApp (or other major groups) were actually knowingly selling lists of contact information to spammers, there would be an outcry and/or investigation. Because that's illegal already.
I'm opposed to the "oh, <some corp> knows about me, they must be evil!" theories out there.
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@blakeyrat said in WhatsApp's illegal:
They wanted to get called by random people they haven't heard from before.
goddamn millenials
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@sockpuppet7 said in WhatsApp's illegal:
Problem is, the network effect on messaging apps and social networks is too strong.
That problem was solved in the 90s (and before) when instead of MSN/AIM/ICQ and shit like that people used multi-messengers (e.g. Trillian) or open protocols. Wasn't Google's stuff initially built on XMPP, before they realized lock-in is more proiftable?
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@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
I'm sure that if WhatsApp (or other major groups) were actually knowingly selling lists of contact information to spammers, there would be an outcry and/or investigation.
Well, they are, they just don't call them "spammers" but "business partners". And they can legally do so because you have allowed them to do so, confirmed that you have the right to give them this information, and agreed to hold them harmless of any litigation (by clicking "I Agree").
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@ixvedeusi said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
I'm sure that if WhatsApp (or other major groups) were actually knowingly selling lists of contact information to spammers, there would be an outcry and/or investigation.
Well, they are, they just don't call them "spammers" but "business partners". And they can legally do so because you have confirmed that you have the right to give them this information and agreed to hold them harmless of any litigation (by clicking "I Agree").
At least in the US, those ToS are worthless. You can't immunize someone against illegal acts like that, especially in clickwrap.
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@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
You can't immunize someone against illegal acts like that, especially in clickwrap.
So basically you're saying all the ToS which allow sharing information with third parties for marketing purposes are actually illegal and won't hold up in court. Because to my ears, this is indistinguishable from saying "we'll give your info to spammers". How come, then, that they are so prevalent and a backbone of the internet's business model?
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@unperverted-vixen said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@sockpuppet7 said in WhatsApp's illegal:
I think there should be law limiting the lenght of a TOS, so they get concise and readable. The law should assume nobody reads a TOS that is more than 500 words long, because its not reasonable to expect that.
I think that there first needs to be laws dictating that laws meet those requirements. They're far worse offenders than TOSes or other legal contracts.
I like this idea. Also, limit the amount of the text of law that can be voted in a single day, so we can hope the lawmakers read what they're voting.
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@ixvedeusi said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
You can't immunize someone against illegal acts like that, especially in clickwrap.
So basically you're saying all the ToS which allow sharing information with third parties for marketing purposes are actually illegal and won't hold up in court. Because to my ears, this is indistinguishable from saying "we'll give your info to spammers". How come, then, that they are so prevalent and a backbone of the internet's business model?
This is the paranoia speaking. You're making an identity between "those who illegally spam phone calls" and "all marketers." And that's a personal thing. Not all marketing (or marketing uses) is spam, and most isn't illegal, immoral, or even unethical. Unless you believe that all ads everywhere are privacy violations.
I want better targeted ads (if there have to be ads at all). Because seeing those ads for women's clothing or for pregnancy tests is a waste of everybody's time and money.
I don't want spam phone calls. Because those waste my time. Note that those are a) illegal already and b) made less of a waste exactly by Google screening my calls (which it can only effectively do if it has access to mapping information between phone numbers and identities).
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@ixvedeusi said in WhatsApp's illegal:
Address Book. You provide us, all in accordance with applicable laws, the phone numbers of WhatsApp users and your other contacts in your mobile address book on a regular basis, including for both the users of our Services and your other contacts.
Important nitpick! This part of the EULA already dismisses itself.
The question is, if the app still reads and sends your contacts, does it mean they are breaching the EULA/privacy laws? Sue them and find out!
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@gąska there ought to be some kind of ligature for szcz.
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@sockpuppet7 said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@unperverted-vixen said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@sockpuppet7 said in WhatsApp's illegal:
I think there should be law limiting the lenght of a TOS, so they get concise and readable. The law should assume nobody reads a TOS that is more than 500 words long, because its not reasonable to expect that.
I think that there first needs to be laws dictating that laws meet those requirements. They're far worse offenders than TOSes or other legal contracts.
I like this idea. Also, limit the amount of the text of law that can be voted in a single day, so we can hope the lawmakers read what they're voting.
There's a reason why lawyers are one of the older professions on Earth. It's a nice idea but like other ideas of that kind ("Socialism", "Pure Capitalism") completely unworkable in reality.
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@sockpuppet7 said in WhatsApp's illegal:
If at least one of these shitcoins allowed me to pay a fraction of a cent for each time a view a site, because that is what they get with ads, a small fraction of a cent.
You don't need any cryptocoins at all to do that. You can do it with plain old fashioned dollars/euros and bank transfers (with one middleman to pool the thousands of $0.01 transactions).
I'm pointing this out because I have a strong personal grudge against the fallacy of associating new technologies with things that were already possible before (which happens more often than you'd imagine).
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@anonymous234 said in WhatsApp's illegal:
The question is, if the app still reads and sends your contacts, does it mean they are breaching the EULA/privacy laws? Sue them and find out!
Well that German court decided the user is liable. I guess they interpreted "all in accordance with applicable laws" as "you have made sure this is done in accordance to applicable laws", which in turn means you have asked permission from everyone in your address book.
I'm not aware of any case attacking the
EULAToS.
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@ixvedeusi Which makes at least some sense. If I upload pictures on facebook or videos on youtube, they make me state that I have the necessary copyright permissions.
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@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
Look at the username. I do go by my real name here.
I don't.
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@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
This is the paranoia speaking. You're making an identity between "those who illegally spam phone calls" and "all marketers." And that's a personal thing.
I'll admit you have a point here, at least as far as phone calls are concerned. When it's about email addresses it seems to me that the picture looks a bit different, but we have been discussing phone numbers and I may have gotten carried away here.
Considering
@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
Not all marketing (or marketing uses) is spam, and most isn't illegal, immoral, or even unethical.
I outlined personal ethical reservations about ads in the foot note of this post; but I consider this more of a conundrum than a call to eradicate all marketing, so your point holds.
However, it being a personal thing, I'd like you to leave the choice to me. To me, the point where the issue in the OP has crossed to the dark side is where WhatsApp requires me to give them all my contacts without any clear commitment on what they will do with them, nor any warning that this is required and might be problematic, and the user then being held liable.
What I'd wish for is that people know this is the case, are aware of the implications and the fact that those aren't totally ethically uncontroversial to everyone, and consider these facts when they decide to use an application or not.
I'd be ok with either a) their ToS clearly stating that they don't use info from those other people in my address book except to find contacts for me, b) allowing me to not give them other people's phone numbers, or c) popping up some kind of warning that they are going to scrape my address book for marketing purposes and that I may need consent from these contacts to do so.
IMHO, from an ethical point of view:
- The use of my address book, in the sole interest of finding contacts for me, which only are provided to me, is OK and should be legal without consent from anyone else.
- If they want to do anything else, including giving any of this information to third parties or targeting advertising at those other people, they must themselves get consent from them to do so. This includes using this info I provided to ask them for consent.
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@admiral_p said in WhatsApp's illegal:
@gąska there ought to be some kind of ligature for szcz.
Huh? They're two distinct sounds. Though I agree we could use some squiggle instead of digraphing the z. On the other hand, it's never ambiguous, so why bother.
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@anonymous234 said in WhatsApp's illegal:
I'm pointing this out because I have a strong personal grudge against the fallacy of associating new technologies with things that were already possible before (which happens more often than you'd imagine).
The shitcoin I said can be old tech, no problem. There is shit like miles programs and Microsoft points, etc.
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@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
And with passing bad laws, you end up reducing the scrutiny applied, because "there's a law already, so it must be ok."
@benjamin-hall said in WhatsApp's illegal:
Spam calls to mobile numbers are already illegal in the US
