[smc-discuss] Facebook and Google spy on you

[Pirate Praveen]

On Wednesday 19 November 2014 11:43 AM, Anivar Aravind wrote:
> 
>     Open Whisper Systems partners with WhatsApp to provide end-to-end
>     encryption
> 
> https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp/
> 
> 
> A comment on that post
> 
> 
> The client sees the data. The app sees the data since the app does the
> encryption. If they gather all they need, keywords, patterns, location
> data etc from the message at the app level and send it to whatsapp
> server, whatsapp can claim that their servers cannot see your messages
> in the literal sense, but they pretty much are not giving up anything.
> They simply moved their user data collection from server to the app.
> 
> If you text "got some new lingerie at macy's" They can still profile you
> as a female, probably 25-35 age group in XXX city, income likely at 40 -
> 80 K unmarried, shops at macys or equivalent.
> 
> If your next text is "cost me 200$" your income will be revised from
> 40-80 to 60 - 100 K
> 
> That is big data. Continuously learning about a users interests by their
> messages. After a year they will know more about you more than your
> husband or friend does.
> 
> All this so that they can sell the same to advertisers. Your profile
> data is passed along btw sites as tracking cookies and everyone knows to
> show you lingerie ads instead of golf gear.
> 
> Now they identify you with a number instead of a name. Example user no
> xxxxx instead of sylvie. Now they can claim we only collect anonymized
> data. But remember they can clearly tie you to different machines you
> use and places you usually are at.
> 
> This is why whatsapp was bought for 20 billion dollars. For the 1
> billion messages sent per month that lest them study their usage patterns.
> 

This is great news! The issue of app is an easier problem to solve and
we are expert at - reverse engineering and building Free Software apps
that don't track. In this case TextSecure is already an open protocol
and it already has Free Software clients, so all we need to do is choose
a Free Software app for whatsapp. The harder part was the network/users
and that is won!

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