back to article WhatsApp? You still don't get EU privacy laws, that's WhatsApp

WhatsApp's privacy policies have come under fresh scrutiny from the European Union's data protection regulators, who say the Facebook-owned business has failed to smarten up its act. The Article 29 Working Party, which comprises data regulators from EU nations and the EU itself, believes that WhatsApp's latest terms and …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Interesting

    How Facebook doesn't get mentioned too much in WhatsApp stories. It's as if everyone in the media is keen to play down the face everything you type is slurped into the huge Facebook data dossier they have on you.

    This is why I don't use Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram. They are far and away the kings of slurp, way worse than Apple, Microsoft or Google.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Interesting

      One could surmise the media are scared of Facebook removing them from timelines as we have recently seen Facebook now wield an obscene amount of power over the media.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Interesting

        I don't use Facebook. I do however use WhatsApp, for routine drivel like "please pick up a pint of milk on the way home". Consequently I am quite happy for them to use the information they garner from these messages to build a dossier on me, to which they can also include my even less private though possibly slightly less trivial posts on forums like this. (Assuming they have the reach to get around the AC bit !)

        I accept that other people's usage of WhatsApp may be different and they don't want WhatsApp spying on their communications or perhaps don't use WhatsApp for that very reason. Simply not using WhatsApp is the solution for communications you want to keep private.

        This is exactly what I do. If I want privacy I use something else. Consequently I see the EU privacy law as being the problem here as there is apparently no way out of the stance of "you have to have privacy", even if it's not relevant to the way you choose to use the service.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Interesting

          I use wechat, the Chinese can view my messages as much as they want.

        2. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Interesting

          "Consequently I see the EU privacy law as being the problem here as there is apparently no way out of the stance of "you have to have privacy", even if it's not relevant to the way you choose to use the service."

          Of course not. The point is that the user of a service is quite clear about how the company wishes to assert ownership over the user's data and process it. Once it has made it perfectly clear how and who will process their data they then must allow a user to clearly accept they wish to allow this or not.

          Therefore you can choose that you wish to not have privacy and you can tick the box and away you go.

          This is very pertinent with WhatsApp as most people would not realise it is owned by facebook. WOuld think it does what it says on the tin - a communications app with end-to-end encryption. They might expect it to be able to access something like their contacts so that you can easily message your contacts if they are also on WhatsApp.

          However they might not expect all their contacts to be uploaded to Facebook to create a user relationship map to work out who knows who and how they are linked so they can be recommended friends or utilise their friend's data to work out information about you. Even if you don't use Facebook, if one of your friends does then you may well have a shadow facebook profile, without even knowing.

          This is why a commision is needed to oversee and protect people's privacy and ensure it works within legislation. Facebook is likely to know how most people voted in the UK EU referendum, know what political party they support, know whether you are a Trump supporter etc.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Interesting

            I have a separate phone for WhatsApp and only share the number with people I want to. This means they (FB/WA) are only seeing a subset of the people I know and 'should' make it a little harder for them to identify me. Yes I will accept they can probably build something out of the Facebook data that they have on everyone I know.

            What amazes me is that people willingly or otherwise share their contacts information with Facebook to begin with. And that's before we talk about them now owning WA and doing so that way. I wouldn't let a complete stranger anywhere near the contacts apps on my normal phone and yet people happily do it with an American company. I also wouldn't give them my normal phone number etc.

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Interesting

              Sadly, you're not just handing off your own personal details, but also that of others. Have you sought permission of everyone in your address book that they are OK with you giving their contact details to Facebook?

              THAT is what Facebook is after.

              I should add that I don't use real names in my WhatsApp phone contacts to add to the complexity for them. The only people in that contacts app are people already using WA and sharing their data. Whether they know that's with Facebook (as well) I don't know.

              1. Anonymous Coward
                Anonymous Coward

                Re: Interesting

                " should add that I don't use real names in my WhatsApp phone contacts to add to the complexity for them "

                - this is irrelevant as you have already provided a unique identification key (a telephone number) to allow them to connect records together. Why use fuzzy data like names when you have an ID number!

                1. This post has been deleted by its author

            2. MachDiamond Silver badge

              Re: Interesting

              "I have a separate phone for WhatsApp and only share the number with people I want to. This means they (FB/WA) are only seeing a subset of the people I know and 'should' make it a little harder for them to identify me. Yes I will accept they can probably build something out of the Facebook data that they have on everyone I know."

              You aren't making hard for them at all. Unless you are diligently maintaining an air gap between your personas, FB has already put all of you in one basket, slapped a price tag on it and is actively selling all they know for pence.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Interesting

            "Therefore you can choose that you wish to not have privacy and you can tick the box and away you go."..... and for my trivial usage of WhatsApp I would be happy to tick that box, if it existed, but it doesn't. The EU privacy law as it's currently drafted does not permit it.

            1. DaLo

              Re: Interesting

              "The EU privacy law as it's currently drafted does not permit it."

              Yes it does. If you give clear unambiguous consent to users with an opt-in rather than opt-out and clearly detail the processing you will be using then you can do what facebook/whatsapp require.

              The problem is, that if they followed the law then most people would not opt-in and so they wouldn't get that data, so they don't. They rely on ignorance not informed consent.

              1. MachDiamond Silver badge

                Re: Interesting

                "he problem is, that if they followed the law then most people would not opt-in and so they wouldn't get that data, so they don't. They rely on ignorance not informed consent."

                I'm not so sure. Younger generations believe that they have nothing to hide, "so what's the big deal, I wanna use this cool new toy". What they aren't adequately cynical enough to realize is that once the trap is sprung, just gnawing off your leg isn't sufficient to get free.

                1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

                  Re: Interesting

                  "I'm not so sure. Younger generations believe that they have nothing to hide, "so what's the big deal, I wanna use this cool new toy""

                  That is true. But they are also too lazy to even check if they can change the default options. And certainly won't refuse to install something until an obvious privacy breach has been rectified.

                  "Gullible" is the word that comes to mind. ("Stupid" isn't that far off either.)

            2. Mage Silver badge
              Paris Hilton

              Re: tick that box

              a) They'd hide it / make it pre ticked / wjhatever

              b) They, like MS Linkedin, want ALL you contacts. You have no moral or legal right to give other people's contact details to a 3rd party without permission. Especially to a company.

              c) Without audited regulator oversight none of these companies can be trusted to comply with any laws or even pay tax.

        3. caffeine addict

          Re: Interesting

          I have less of a problem with FB / WA / Whatever slurping data from inside their networks. It's the other crap that I hate. The only tracking beacons I routinely block are from FB and I'll happily admit to browsing FB in an incognito window despite watching pron in a normal one. FB still frequently gets hold of things I've browsed in a supposedly different sandbox.

          The real data slurp (IMHO) comes when you install one of their apps on your phone...

          1. Mark 65

            Re: Interesting

            FB still frequently gets hold of things I've browsed in a supposedly different sandbox.

            That's from fingerprinting you as a user. There's a website you can go to which will inform you how unique you are as and endpoint. Think about it this way...

            1. You visit a site from whatever browser on a machine and look at shit.

            2. Most pages have the Facebook "like" nonsense included which will have the fingerprinting code. It creates a "unique" id for you.

            3. You browse other shit on other sites.

            4. A "unique" id is created the same way on these other sites and likely matches that in (2).

            5. Related shit thus gets served.

            Re-identifying users is where a shitload of effort gets spent as that is key to the money making machine. The more info you can link to being from the same source the more your dataset is worth. Whether they create one id or a series of ids of escalating uniqueness I cannot say, but what I can guess is that they're pretty fucking good at it.

            For the curious, try this site across your various usage patterns - sandboxes on same machine, different browsers etc. Bare in mind they are just showing one part of the re-identification world.

            https://panopticlick.eff.org/

        4. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Interesting

          Consequently I am quite happy for them to use the information they garner from these messages to build a dossier on me, to which they can also include my even less private though possibly slightly less trivial posts on forums like this.

          Sadly, you're not just handing off your own personal details, but also that of others. Have you sought permission of everyone in your address book that they are OK with you giving their contact details to Facebook?

          THAT is what Facebook is after.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Interesting

            "Have you sought permission of everyone in your address book that they are OK with you giving their contact details to Facebook?"

            Of course not: I am not a legal entity legal entity engaged in economic activity so privacy law does not apply. Secondly when they supplied me with their contact details they assigned no conditions what to do with them, just as I placed no such conditions on them. This is the norm. When you supply any contact details to any individual you are effectively making those contact details public to a limited extent.

        5. tiggity Silver badge

          Re: Interesting

          I use texts for that sort of message, though I'm normally the dogsbody receiving a "do this task on your way home" message rather than sending it.

          Using an app seems an unnecessary complication for bog standard phone functionality (I have no need for my mundane texts to be encrypted as they contain nothing remotely juicy (bar requests to buy orange juice on way home) )

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. DaLo

        Re: Interesting

        "Is it though? It's end to end encrypted so surely they have meta data but not message contents?"

        If they own the app they could have access to your messages. End-to-end encryption stops a middle-man or their comms servers, but it doesn't stop a back-channel directly from the app. I'm not suggesting they do use this capability, I very much doubt they do but they could.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Interesting

        I am not entirly convinced about the end to end privacy , since recently within two minutes of whatapp messaging to a family member I am now single as the now ex just ended a year and half relationship by txt message , I promptly receive advertimants for lonely hearts adds, strange coincidence that within two minute sthey respond with a advert for something that was irrelivant until that moument. While the communications are encrypted end to end , I strongly suspect that whatsapp are at the client end of th conversation scrubbing the information for anything they can make a euro or dollar from . The uproar against the encryption of said communications I also suspect is a smoke screen to cover the fact that the commuications are in fact explistily monitored. I also believe the very reason they are loking to curb the advertisments is that sooner or later people are going to realise that they are being watched again. I would guess the relivant parties are afraid they are going to get there nuts caught in the vice when the house of cards comes down on them. When they get caught doing what they are telling everyone they can't do .

        Why keep mking so much noise about encryption of end to end systems , as the point is rather mute when you can montior the end points (the phones)

        1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

          Re: Interesting

          "moot", not "mute". Mute means silent.

    3. FIA Silver badge

      Re: Interesting

      This is why I don't use Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram. They are far and away the kings of slurp, way worse than Apple, Microsoft or Google.

      Way worse than Google? Really? I put them in the same ballpark myself. If you're not the customer, you're the commodity.

      At least when you give companies money directly they have some incentive not to totally screw you.

      1. Teiwaz

        Re: Interesting

        At least when you give companies money directly they have some incentive not to totally screw you.

        Not enough 'incentive' to resist the lure of customers usage data, given that the majority of their customer base neither know nor worry about it,, having been 'domesticated' to the regular 'milking' and by now regard it as a necessary part of the process of 'chewing the cud'.

        Companies seem to regard the right to slurp customer data as part of the payment for their product, whether or not the 'customer' is charged or just amicable cattle lured into a paddock.

      2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: Interesting

        "At least when you give companies money directly they have some incentive not to totally screw you."

        It's an incentive far too many choose to ignore.

      3. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

        Re: Interesting

        At least when you give companies money directly they have some incentive not to totally screw you.

        Indeed. However, lest we forget, MS actually wants money for Windows 10 (I know, hard to believe!), and yet cannot be trusted.

    4. aqk
      Big Brother

      Re: Interesting how about Telegram?

      I've been attempting to use Telegram.

      Unfortunately, most people I know have been brainwashed by the Facebook/Whatsapp Borg, and refuse to use Telegram.

      Any opinions here about Telegram and their claimed "no slurping from us!" policy?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If they don't toe the line

    Could they (and by implication) and Facebook be closed down in Europe?

    That should concentrate the minds of Zuck and co.

    It won't make any difference though.

    They will be contrite and fix this 'hole' but as sure as eggs is eggs, they'll continue to suck all the data they want from us just by other means (probably illegal and that we don't know about yet)

    This (and many, many more) is one of the reasons why I do not use any of the main social media sites/tools/products at all and never will.

    FB is really working hard at passing Google in the data slurp league. Twitter and MS and the rest are way, way behind the leading two.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Close down? Hardly! Reminder of how we got here:

      https://qz.com/993995/how-facebooks-fb-sheryl-sandberg-personally-lobbied-irish-prime-minister-enda-kenny-as-shown-by-2014-emails-published-in-the-irish-independent/

      https://qz.com/162791/how-a-bureaucrat-in-a-struggling-country-at-the-edge-of-europe-found-himself-safeguarding-the-worlds-data/

    2. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      Re: If they don't toe the line

      "Could they (and by implication) and Facebook be closed down in Europe?"

      Just wait until next May and then issue the fines.

      BTW, can it be one fine for the whole EU or one for each country in which they operate?

  3. seven of five

    Lenovo C2

    Stories like this are the reason we keep a "sacrificial Android" - the (dualSIM!) C2 mentioned above. 50 Eur and what is on the prepaid SIMs is all whats is at risk, the adressbook is virtually empty, calls will be made only in dire circumstances. But for facebook, dubious games and apps it is the perfect tool. Airgapped without wifi.

    Cuts into the android pretty deep, yes, but we got proper (and now cleaner than ever) phones for that.

    downside: second device to drag around.

    downside downside: helps zilch against being in other peoples adressbook with a secondary number. It is not the divulging of (some) personal information, it is the aggregation by companies I dislike.

    Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

      Don't use FaceBook, WhatsApp, Instagram or any of those other

      "so called" media ?

      1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

        Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

        Neither do I , oh wait , yes i do . Last night I needed to send a text message with a picture , which costs extra money and is not part of anybodys free texts in their phone contract. To avoid spending 50p I sent the message via whatsapp instead.

        How else could I have done that? Bear in mind the recipient was a "normal" and dosent have their own ftp server set up or anything like that.

        1. Ben Tasker

          Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

          Last night I needed to send a text message with a picture , which costs extra money and is not part of anybodys free texts in their phone contract. To avoid spending 50p I sent the message via whatsapp instead.

          How else could I have done that? Bear in mind the recipient was a "normal" and dosent have their own ftp server set up or anything like that.

          Presumably, like most people, they've hooked their email up to their phone right? No FTP servers needed.

          Course, if you want to go the whole hog, you set up your own box, push the images to that and send them a secure link, but that probably is overcooking the effort side of things.

          There are always ways around it if you want to solve problems like that. The trick to making it work is to make sure any extra effort is on your side, and then work to minimise that too.

          Personally, I've just given anyone I really care to talk to a jabber account on my server and dumped an app on their phone for them. They can talk to each other, and they can talk to me via it. Nothing extra really needed - if they want to use WhatsApp to talk to other people that's obviously fine, but I've neither need nor intention of doing so.

          1. MachDiamond Silver badge

            Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

            "Last night I needed to send a text message with a picture , which costs extra money and is not part of anybodys free texts in their phone contract. To avoid spending 50p I sent the message via whatsapp instead."

            Do this: post your missive on a web site, send a SMS to everybody on the list to go and check the web site for an important notice. Better yet, send an email. Jeez, you are crying about a problem that does not exist to justify using a service that is bad for you.

            Smoking smelly cigars wards off flies. There are some side effects.

        2. DropBear

          Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

          "Last night I needed to send a text message with a picture"

          ...seriously? They have WhatsApp but not a single fscking email address...?

          1. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

            Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

            Thanks Ben & Dropbear , Email would in fact work . It was me being the luddite not the recipients.

            I've just sent my first photo-to-email from phone.

        3. Loud Speaker

          Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

          Informed consent in this context means a big, red button labelled: "click here to permanently flush your last figment of privacy down the toilet forever".

          Which would you prefer to sacrifice? your first born child (and probably all other children) or 50p?

        4. Zippy's Sausage Factory

          Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

          How else could I have done that?

          Signal would be a good option.

        5. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

          How else could I have done that? Bear in mind the recipient was a "normal" and dosent have their own ftp server set up or anything like that.

          Without resorting to iOS devices:

          - Telegram. Russian servers but relatively open and reviewed, free because gazillionaire is sponsoring it to annoy someone.

          - Signal. US origin, but from one of the few people who I would trust in the security business. Open Source, works well, no iPad version.

          - Threema. IMHO just about the best for messaging, a little bit behind on secure calls (will not do secure calls on older iOS devices, Telegram and Signal do). On a par with Signal, but of Swiss origin, like Signal developed by someone who has seriously earned his spurs in the security world. Costs a tiny bit of money, which seems to be enough of a barrier to ensure it's more used by people clued up on security.

          Does that help? None of the above copy your address book, instead they use hash functions to match up users.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Don't use WhatsApp

        Some clubs use WhatsApp to organize themselves, announce last-minute changes to training sessions, etc. A "dont use" strategy tends to leave you well out of the loop, and a switch to a non-Whatsapp club is not always a viable option.

        And good luck trying to convince a club committee full of whatsapp-enthusiasts that their choice of communication tool is unsuitable.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Don't use WhatsApp

          And good luck trying to convince a club committee full of whatsapp-enthusiasts that their choice of communication tool is unsuitable.

          So, you give in ? I installed Whats[ThatCrap]App on a device once, it asked to access my contacts, I denied it access, and ... it would not work without. That is the code quality of this piece of shit. No, I do not want it to slurp my contacts, thank you very much! I named the CEO "Sukkel" in my contacts, which is not the way I would address him, it has a special meaning in his mother tongue .... Imagine, a data cockup, and the CEO of the company I work for gets an email invite FROM me to join whatsapp ? Imagine, they lose that data, and somebody external calls the CEO's personal mobile in my name.... data, important ... I like to show co-workers my phone as he calls me ... his photo with "Sukkel calling" is quite a laugh ;-)

        2. Mage Silver badge
          Flame

          Re: Some clubs use WhatsApp

          This is why Linkedin, Whatsapp/Facebook Google/Gmail/YouTube, Amazon/Goodreads/IMDB, Twitter etc have to be FORCED to obey the law. With significant fines per user infringed to management. A £1.2M or even £20M fine to the company is merely a cost of doing business.

          There needs to be viable 3rd party auditing,

          I'm shocked by the amount of MY personal information and photos that OTHER people, whom I thought intelligent and sane have shared on so called "Social Media". They don't seem to realise it can be abusive, it can be illegal and it's certainly immoral. Some are family members that should know better. They don't stop either.

          It's worse than them paying to publish it in the local newspaper, or pasting it on the Library/Post Office Community board. Most (all?) have set no privacy settings and use their real names and don't get it that email is acceptable to share something with someone else in the family, but Whats App, Instagram, Facebook etc is not. It's public.

        3. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Don't use WhatsApp

          "And good luck trying to convince a club committee full of whatsapp-enthusiasts that their choice of communication tool is unsuitable."

          I have plenty of activities and have dropped some that decided to use FB/WA or somebody else instead of just using the org's web site. I can knock up a basic Wordpress site in under an hour with plenty of options for multiple editors/posters, calendars, notifications etc etc. A whopping £45 in hosting per year and Bob's your uncle. I don't see FB's "free" service as being that great of a deal. If everybody in a group kicks down a couple quid each year, it's paid for. Coffee and danish is more than that.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Don't use WhatsApp

            And good luck trying to convince a club committee full of whatsapp-enthusiasts that their choice of communication tool is unsuitable.

            To be honest these companies rely on the world being full of idiots. "...but it's convenient". Fuck'em.

            To give yet another example of such stupidity, a club of which my kids are members puts a lot of updates and info on its FB page rather than its very own website (which is looking decidedly outdated) but the parent that does the updates keeps changing the page to a private site/group. The information then becomes unavailable to anyone that doesn't want to have a FB account and join the group and the visibility goes to near zero.

            This plague needs to die.

      3. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

        >Don't use FaceBook, WhatsApp, Instagram or any of those other "so called" media ?

        Won't save you as if you are mentioned by friends who use these things, you will still be known to them - its called a 'shadow profile' and because you are not a user yourself you have no control over the content. Then again even if you were a user you'd still have minimal controls.

        There is no escape from this insidious invasion of our privacy! :(

        Anon because... well just because... not that its really anon...

      4. Triggerfish

        Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

        Unfortunately not using them is not always possible, unless you want to cut yourself off from people and so on.

        1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

          Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

          "Unfortunately not using them is not always possible, unless you want to cut yourself off from people and so on."

          No problem with cutting myself off from people who do use them.

          1. Triggerfish

            Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

            YMMV but for me that's pretty much everyone I know, plus half the places where I live don't have websites they have facebook pages. I'd struggle to access services and find shops and so on. It's so ubiquitous that a phone call or text message is unusual.

            1. DropBear

              Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

              @Triggerfish - you're absolutely right, but typically one can still see enough of most Facebook front pages to glance the phone number or address whenever I really must, and I don't give a damn about any of the rest of the "page". As for people, where they choose to conduct their own social life does not concern me - I have no qualms about "bothering" any of them with the occasional text or call if I feel like it, and anyone who cares enough to get ahold of me is damn well welcome to do it the same way. It sure beats whipping out my phone every three minutes to type another few words replying to some "stream of consciousness" idiot-with-a-chat-line on the other end, like some people I know do.

              1. Triggerfish

                Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome. @Dropbear

                As I say YMMV but I live abroad and phoning someone and speaking their own language is a bit beyond me at the moment, text has some advantage over that.

                Here FB is so entrenched I don't even know some peoples phones numbers. People don't do calls av wage is low, it's money thrown away when someone can use leeched wifi and FB. People over here even have phones that don't work for calls because they are broken doesn't make any difference to them.

                Whatsapp tend to be among the more Westerners and even then it has advantages, from a quick text message to parents with couple of nice pics to reassure them I am alive (or being able to give me a call via Wifi), and friends back home, shared groups and messaging people in other countries. It has advantages that are very hard to beat. Without having to try and get everyone across to a new style of thing, including technophobic family members, it's not really practical.

                In the UK I avoided FB, easy enough to say call or text, over here its the communication tool of the whole of the region, genuinely unavoidable, if you would like to talk to people and find things. Whatsapp likewise.

            2. MachDiamond Silver badge

              Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

              You may find it strange, but large companies such as GM have found that their presence on social media doesn't add to their brand or sales. It does add a ton of aggravation and administrative cost to maintain their accounts. Their web sites do much better since they have complete control and can display content however they like.

              "Likes" don't pay the bills.

        2. MachDiamond Silver badge

          Re: Helpful tips to make the above concept better welcome.

          "Unfortunately not using them is not always possible, unless you want to cut yourself off from people and so on."

          I'm fine with that. I don't want to associate with people that will hand out information about me willy nilly. I have to avoid letting my sister take family photos with me since she insists on posting everything on FB. Yep, I'm a complete bastard that will excommunicate my own family. I take my privacy seriously.

    2. Albo123

      Re: Lenovo C2

      " for facebook, dubious games and apps it is the perfect tool. Airgapped without wifi"

      - how is facebook running if airgapped?

  4. Wolfclaw

    Time watchdogs started getting serious and apply multi-billion dollar fines for obvious illegal tactics or deliberate ignorance of the law !

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Wouldn't be too surprised if someone was already working on a case to drop like a ton of bricks on FB on GDPR day.

    2. Teiwaz

      Time watchdogs started getting serious and apply multi-billion dollar fines for obvious illegal tactics or deliberate ignorance of the law !

      Well past time. An individual would certainly face potentially crippling fines or worse, for stepping outside 'the law'

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        With such seeming immunity from prosecution or sanction it almost makes you think that the 'ranga twat is working for the man. I mean, what better way for the Government to gather all sorts of human networking data and brain farts than to provide a medium by which people just openly offered a 1984 view into their existence for free - no rubber hose required.

  5. Prst. V.Jeltz Silver badge

    So basically they have to un-pre-tick the consent box and write "we share with facebook" in the terms and conditions?

    Golly I can see why its taken so long and why they are launching a "Task Force"* to investigate the issue.

    *

    'Task Force' to me is an overused buzzword designed to make it look like you are doing something about X , whether you are or not. A real Task Force is , like , the combination of military forces we sent to Argentina in the eighties.

    1. DropBear

      "'Task Force' to me is an overused buzzword"

      Making it a fireable offence to use it to designate any assembly of employees that isn't rappelling down from choppers through holes in the ceiling for all of their meetings is a-ok by me. Now, who's up for some crowdfunding to commission a few Arks helpfully labelled from "B" to "Z" from Elon (we can just restart from "BB", "BC" etc. if need be)...?

  6. Zog_but_not_the_first
    Devil

    Bloody EU

    Who do they think they are interfering with corporate property (that's you and me BTW)?

    Brexit now!

    #sarcasm

    1. Hans 1

      Re: Bloody EU

      #sarcasm

      INFO: Redundancy detected!

      1. anonymous boring coward Silver badge

        Re: Bloody EU

        #sarcasm

        INFO: Redundancy detected!

        It's certainly not redundant for your average Brexiter. Although they might not know what "sarcasm" means.

  7. Mephistro
    Flame

    Social media platforms and wolf packs (short rant warning!)

    I don't personally use social media platforms, but whenever I have to interact with them in behalf of one of my clients, I feel dirty. FB, WA, Twitter... all of them are machines designed to create echo chambers, disseminate lies, develop wolf pack -or lynching crowd- mentalities and control the hoi polloi.

    I find 'commercial data slurp' almost tolerable when compared with the above, although it's clear that the same data will have both commercial and political uses.

    In short: "Kill with fire!"

  8. chivo243 Silver badge
    WTF?

    Toothless old dog...

    ...handed a €1.2m fine!

    yeah, I'm sure that €1.2m fine is breaking the FaceBank.

    Change the "m" to a "b" and maybe they might start to understand the gravity of this situation.

  9. mark l 2 Silver badge

    I do use Whatsapp regularly to communicate with friends and family and atm its ad free but when enough people are relying on it they will probably push out new updates which starts showing targeted ads. Remember that Facebook had no ads at first and only switched them on once they had enough users. They don't offer these services for free unless they can see a what of monetising it at some point.

    1. MachDiamond Silver badge

      "Remember that Facebook had no ads at first and only switched them on once they had enough users."

      FB does make money from ads, games, purchases, etc, but their biggest revenue comes from selling member's personal information. Wonder why you didn't get the last few jobs you applied for? Are the photos of you online heavily weighted towards snaps in the local boozer or at parties with your friends? Are you gay? Religion/atheist? Lots of kids? Think of all the things that can't be asked on a job application or in an interview that might be gleaned from a Big Data dossier provider. Larger companies have subscriptions which means they can pull up your file for sofa change or less. Maybe your file has you down as being arrested for car theft (bogus, obviously) or having been involved in a case against a former employer? Might as well line up in the dole queue, your life is over…. care to share anything else about yourself with us?

  10. Thought About IT

    Paid for option

    I'd pay for WhatsApp, if that was an option which turned off all data slurping. As it is, I won't install it, much to the annoyance of my family.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WhatsApp gave a "misleading impression" to users

    "by saying the privacy policy had been updated to "reflect new features" - Hello? First world corruption / jail time???

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41761264

  12. Lloyd

    Oh dear oh dear

    " led by the UK's information commissioner"

    You may as well have appointed some roadkill to investigate, I doubt the OIC can even spell privacy let alone know what it means.

  13. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

    Slowly, slowly

    "The group first raised its concerns last year after WhatsApp updated its small print. In November 2016"

    That's right. They're on the hook. Keep playing them slowly until next May. Then go for the 4%.

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