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Out of context: Reply #66457
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- detritus0
I had a bit of a rant about WhatsApp with my partner last night - she, and one of my best friends are Absolutely Against Facebook and anything like that.. yet quite contentedly have this application on which (as far as I understand) is either hard or impossible to ring-fence.
So my partner was having a minor complaint about her best friend having added her to a High School Group, but given that context wasn't too concerned.
I asked her 'well, what if there was someone there who you really wanted to avoid? are you happy with third parties having the ability to control your privacy for you?" Sure, this time it was her best friend and something innocuous.. but what if not?
I find it very, very troubling how keen people are to use an app which actively uses your significant personal identifier (personal mobile number) to essentially virus-spread its way across multiple networks.
"Aah, but it's only meta data!" Nope, we know that's bullshit.
"If it's free, you're the product". Ask yourself - what exactly is it that Facebook gets from Whatsapp?*
perhaps I'm just old, friendless and paranoid, but i think Whatsapp's one of the most worrisome apps out there.
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And so I don't get invited to parties.
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* Sure, "it spent couple Billion to countenance a potential threat", but that's not the be-all.
- I don't know who I'm bleating at here.
https://media.tenor.…detritus - one dark night last winter I met a bunch of guys online building thousands of fake fb profiles and accounts to fool the decisions they make based on user data.uan
- and if you want to know what they do...they map humanity in realtime and use that knowledge to play the financial marketuan
- Y did I do a read of dis?robthelad
- i'm not sure. I tried to warn you, belatedly.detritus
- I see my mobile # as a part of me like a name or so. Its written on my cards, its in my email footer etc. So I don't have a problem with people knowing my #.mekk
- I can still block certain users and I am still in charge what I do with my # and what content goes with it.mekk
- Can you control who your friends share your telephone number with, or does WA encourage such sharing? I view that as a form of dark pattern...detritus
- ..which has easily more potential consequence than sharing an IM handle or email address, oth of which are essentially disposable.detritus
- A recent snapchat 'update' opened up privacy preferences and gave away detailed GPS location data. Kids use it. Huge security risk.monoboy
- My daughter had a private musical.ly account until an update made it public. Complete strangers could see and comment on her videos. Fucking outrageous.monoboy
- Data mining, profiling and dark patterns are the tools of modern businesses to shift units. Scary times.monoboy
- ^ everyone is mining data in big scale yet there is not much to do with itmekk
- Politicians are using companies like Cambridge Analytica to successfully swing elections with data profiling.monoboy
- I don't know who I'm bleating at here.