Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard
A California man is suing Facebook for allegedly scanning the content of private messages sent between users of the site.
The suit alleges that Facebook scans the messages in search of hyperlinks sent between users. "If there is a link to a web page contained in that message, Facebook treats it as a 'like' of the page, and increases the page's 'like,' counter by one," the suit contends. The site tracks when users "like" pages in order to compile individual profiles that allow third parties to send targeted advertisements.
Source: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/facebook-sued-for-scanning-private-user-messages/article/2591806
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Wednesday May 25 2016, @09:50AM
And WhatsApp may even be end-to-end encrypted (I don't recall). But they still have the number of communications, with whom, the frequency, etc. And there were recently reports on using metadata (what they would have) to infer a surprising amount of data. Well, not terribly surprising, because the amount you can glean from a little info is usually quite a lot.