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WhatsApp assures users that no one can see their messages — but the company has an extensive monitoring operation and regularly shares personal information with prosecutors.
WHEN MARK ZUCKERBERG unveiled a new "privacy-focused vision" for Facebook in March 2019, he cited the company's global messaging service, WhatsApp, as a model.
Zuckerberg's vision centered on WhatsApp's signature feature, which he said the company was planning to apply to Instagram and Facebook Messenger: end-to-end encryption, which converts all messages into an unreadable format that is only unlocked when they reach their intended destinations. WhatsApp messages are so secure, he said, that nobody else — not even the company — can read a word. As Zuckerberg had put it earlier, in testimony to the U.S. Senate in 2018, "We don't see any of the content in WhatsApp."
[...] Those assurances are not true. WhatsApp has more than 1,000 contract workers filling floors of office buildings in Austin, Texas, Dublin and Singapore, where they examine millions of pieces of users' content. Seated at computers in pods organized by work assignments, these hourly workers use special Facebook software to sift through streams of private messages, images and videos that have been reported by WhatsApp users as improper and then screened by the company's artificial intelligence systems. These contractors pass judgment on whatever flashes on their screen — claims of everything from fraud or spam to child porn and potential terrorist plotting — typically in less than a minute.
[...] A ProPublica investigation, drawing on data, documents and dozens of interviews with current and former employees and contractors, reveals how, since purchasing WhatsApp in 2014, Facebook has quietly undermined its sweeping security assurances in multiple ways. (Two articles this summer noted the existence of WhatsApp's moderators but focused on their working conditions and pay rather than their effect on users' privacy. This article is the first to reveal the details and extent of the company's ability to scrutinize messages and user data — and to examine what the company does with that information.)
The reference article gives a detailed account of how privacy is compromised ...
[ProPublica has added this clarification. - Fnord]
Clarification, Sept. 8, 2021: A previous version of this story caused unintended confusion about the extent to which WhatsApp examines its users' messages and whether it breaks the encryption that keeps the exchanges secret. We've altered language in the story to make clear that the company examines only messages from threads that have been reported by users as possibly abusive. It does not break end-to-end encryption.
[Also Covered By]: Gizmodo
(Score: 5, Touché) by digitalaudiorock on Wednesday September 08 2021, @08:29PM (5 children)
Is it just me? How would anyone actually believe that "no one can see their messages"? How the hell could that possibly be true?
This one reminds me of when Dropbox got called out by the FTC for claiming that they couldn't decrypt your content if they wanted to, when they control the keys, and are provably decrypting you shit when you download it.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 08 2021, @10:38PM (1 child)
I'm reminded of a more recent incident, where there was a new, "completely secure" means of communication marketed to the kinds of people that were likely to engage in violence, and it turned out that "completely secure" means of communication was an FBI sting operation.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 10 2021, @05:56AM
You mean Gab? Or Parler? Or the Miller one?
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Wednesday September 08 2021, @11:40PM
The most data hungry, deep-data diving privacy ignoring monster organization on the planet buys a messaging app.
...and people somehow think it wouldn't be used to add more data and links to and about people and to learn more about them, track them and decrease their privacy?
What else would explain the purchase?
"suddenly, we'd like to have one part of our company look after your privacy"... as if!
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 09 2021, @11:31AM (1 child)
How, after knowing that people believe things like microchips in vaccines, can you still wonder what people believe?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 09 2021, @12:40PM
Microchips in vaccines is at least possible with modern technology, a better example would be religion.