WhatsApp exists for me primarily as a communication tool. It works pretty well for that. I also have credit cards, grocery discount cards, and so on. They all harvest some level of information from me. I’m wondering what exactly the problem is? So far, people have complained about ads being targeted to them, and large dossiers of information being kept on them. Is there an actual immediate issue with either of those things besides “I don’t like it”?
If it was only companies using information to target ads at me, I wouldn’t care all that much.
Where they crossed a line is when they started sharing those databases with government agencies.
If I post a message about something politically unpopular, I expect to receive ads targeted at people with similar opinions. I do not expect to end up on an FBI watch list, or have my bank accounts shut down (“de-banking”), be fired from my job or be placed on the TSA’s no fly list or worse, as has happened to quite a lot of people, including elected officials, over the last 10 years.
Have any of those things happened to you?
Also prefer use of Signal recognizing however that it has a smaller user base.
Here is an example of how social media and data broker information was used to determine if I was “trustworthy” or not.
I wanted to buy a monitor from the HP online store a few years ago. Transaction goes through, credit card issuer approves transaction. Then a few hours later an “Order Declined” email shows up.
What happened next was ridiculous. I spent the next three days fighting with HP to get them to take my money. I’m pretty sure HP uses an outsourced service that is supposed to reduce fraud. What really sucks for customers is that you’re treated like a criminal from the very beginning.
You have to play phone tag with a call center, most likely run by the outsourcer, that is clearly not located in North America. The call center reps want you to give them all sorts of additional information, probably to see if they can come up with matches in data broker and social media searches. I carefully manage my online presence so the reps kept telling me my order could not be approved.
I would have cancelled the order but this monitor was not available from any major online retailers as a first party purchase. I ended up acting really angry with a rep on my last phone call…and for whatever reason, he agreed to approve my order.
Obviously, I’m not going to shop on HP’s website ever again. I’ve never run into this problem buying from Apple or Amazon. Maybe companies that are highly focused on radically minimizing expenses think alienating customers is an acceptable tradeoff in order to save a few bucks on credit card chargebacks. Talk about short sighted!
2 Likes
Have any of those things happened to you?
If you wait to protect your privacy until one of those things happens to you, you’ve waited too long.
5 Likes
I’m not disputing this, but the information they’re mining can’t be the actual content of WhatsApp messages if those messages are encrypted end-to-end. Personally, I don’t use Facebook and I don’t care if Meta knows who I am communicating with. I deplore the fact that Meta (and so many other companies) spy on their customers; but I feel no need to stop using a product that is so useful to me.
This is strangely pertinent again now because my dear mother is frustrated that she can’t appreciate all the pretty pictures on Instagram without an account, and really wants to. She’s already perfectly happy using WhatsApp, which makes it very difficult for me to quantify the benefit of setting her up with a second number, just for Instagram, something she is pestering me to do for her.
Sigh.
From my perspective, it would be a real shame to let the corporate world’s greedy disregard for our privacy stop us from enjoying the internet’s vast storehouse of riches. It’s not so hard to minimize one’s exposure to anything that might cause any actual harm.
I agree that it would, but this does not somehow make it any less egregious. Particularly in my mother’s case, where she simply does not need an account, because she doesn’t actually intend to publish anything, and using an identifier that others potentially know exposes her to privacy risks that she would rather not be.
It really should be a choice, wouldn’t you agree?
Of course it should be a choice; but we are powerless to force big corporations to do anything because our government works for the corporations, not for the people.
3 Likes
That logic applies to everything. Never been mugged? You should never leave the house so that it doesn’t happen.
As always, it’s a trade-off. How much utility do you get out of leaving the house and is it worth the risk?
It is a choice – you’re getting a service (instagram, Facebook, etc) and paying with your information. If you don’t want to pay that price, you don’t have to and there are often paid (with money) alternatives (eg, I just switched to paying for Kagi for search because Google was getting borderline unusable).
I’ve gone through the same mess with Dell and a few other companies. I try to avoid buying from those companies as a result.
FWIW, my last two PC purchases were from a Costco warehouse, literally because Dell’s “security” system didn’t like the fact that my real name doesn’t appear in my e-mail address (what the support person claimed after being pressed for an explanation). The fact that I’ve had a Dell account with that e-mail address for decades, and made plenty of purchases in the past didn’t matter at all. “The algorithm” decided that I was no longer cool enough to do business with them.
These companies contract for massive anti-fraud systems that they don’t understand, so when it generates a false positive (rejecting someone legitimate), nobody knows why, and even if they know, they may not be allowed to tell you.
Or they start demanding more proof-of-ID information than I gave the bank to get my mortgage, which I refuse to give them, because I don’t want identity thieves to get a hold of it when they inevitably will get hacked in the future. (It was this nonsense that caused me to close my PayPal and eBay accounts a long time ago.)
I’m sure the accountants take a look at the lower fraud numbers and claim victory, but ignore the fact that it is almost certainly taking a bite out of their legitimate sales as well.
And as a customer, if this means I have to go back to shopping at brick-and-mortar stores, as I did for those two PC purchases, well, I’m OK with that.
4 Likes
I also have been having problems with one of my credit cards being accepted initially over the web, then getting an email the next day rejecting the card. Sometimes a second try works, but other times it doesn’t. My name is in the email address I usually, so that’s not the problem. It only happens to one card, and I’m wondering if a certain number of rejections causes further rejections.
1 Like
But those pictures don’t belong to Meta, they belong to the people who take them. Meta’s just extracting rent by gatekeeping access to it. You can argue that they’re just making the best of an opportunity, but that seems like cold comfort to the people who rely on these tools because, let’s be honest here, they have to in order to participate meaningfully in society. It’s a very hard pill to swallow.
In my case, there wasn’t ever a problem with the card issuer approving the transaction. It was the retailer…crazy stuff.
Meta offers the service that allows people to share the photos. That’s what they’re charging for, just like Apple charges for access to the App Store (albeit with a cut of the proceeds rather than personal information).
I don’t think they have to – I rarely use my instagram account anymore and I find my societal participation quite meaningful.
But if it is that essential, then all the more reason for Meta to charge for it.
Can the WhatsApp users here confirm that it’s as easy as this article says to add a Linked Device? This seems like a significant security concern along the lines of Sequoia’s now-reduced screen recording prompts. (I haven’t been forced to make the choice that triggered this thread and generally try to avoid all Meta products on principle.)
I can confirm. It’s very easy. It would require regular ‘syncing’ however, the link seems to be dropped randomly, it’s not something you would rely on day-to-day.
Hadn’t thought about someone else having it sync with their device. More awful Meta.
So security through incompetence? ;-)
2 Likes