[HN Gopher] Germany bans Facebook from handling WhatsApp data ov...
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Germany bans Facebook from handling WhatsApp data over privacy
concerns
Author : giuliomagnifico
Score : 242 points
Date : 2021-05-11 18:00 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.euronews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.euronews.com)
| the-dude wrote:
| IIRC this was exactly the policy the EU required for allowing the
| acquisition in the first place.
| annadane wrote:
| Right? And then they went ahead and did it anyway
| FridayoLeary wrote:
| Unless we have German police personally looking over shoulders
| wherever WhatsApps data is handled, i don't see how this exchange
| of information can be prevented.
| fishmaster wrote:
| I think it's more that they can be fined heavily should it ever
| be found out.
| eqvinox wrote:
| The aspect I find most interesting and internationally relevant
| is that as these local rulings proliferate, they kinda make it
| visible to what degree companies finance their operations by
| selling user data. The more the business model relies on this,
| the more likely companies are to get hit with a ruling like this
| -- and it's not just the ruling that's interesting, but also what
| Facebook's reaction will be. If they stop offering or reduce
| WhatsApp services in Germany (or India), that's a great indicator
| that the service isn't profitable without the sale (or other
| commercial exploitation, Facebook is an ad company after all) of
| large amounts of user data.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Reducing service can also be a strong-armed way to force
| customers to advocate for them.
|
| "Want to keep talking to grandma? Better tell your government
| to leave us alone"
| leipert wrote:
| I am actually using this argument in the inverse: "hey
| grandma, do you still wanna see baby pictures, please install
| <other-messenger>"
| DeliriumTrigger wrote:
| That's exactly what they are doing right
| now...https://www.welivesecurity.com/2021/05/11/whatsapp-
| limit-fea...
| lucian1900 wrote:
| The same happened at a smaller scale when Chinese regulators
| ruled loot boxes must disclose their loot tables. Even though
| they aren't guaranteed to be identical in other countries, a
| great deal was learned about how such games operate.
| cuillevel3 wrote:
| Whatsapp already had a separate privacy policy for the European
| region (https://www.whatsapp.com/legal/updates/privacy-policy-
| eea?la...)
|
| Apparently that was too permissive. I guess they had to try?
| zwaps wrote:
| The privacy policy mildly states that they do not share
| personal data with facebook for ads right now.
|
| But it also says they might do so at any time, at the latest
| when the EU okays it.
|
| So yeah, at the very least it is too vague to be a proper
| privacy policy allowing informed consent
| thamer wrote:
| This article is pretty vague. What does it even mean to ban
| Facebook "from using data from WhatsApp users"?
|
| Facebook "uses data from WhatsApp users" to support basic
| features like authentication, is that banned now? What about
| sending a WhatsApp message to a contact, doesn't that "use data
| from WhatsApp users"? Facebook has to look up some internal user
| ID (user data), then route the message to their devices, probably
| by device ID (also user data). How do you do that if using data
| banned?
|
| I suspect there's more to it but this particular article isn't
| telling the story in a particularly clear or helpful manner.
| Hopefully the actual injunction is not as vague.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| From Spiegel:
|
| _" Am Dienstag gab Caspars Behorde bekannt, dass sie eine
| Anordnung erlassen hat, die es Facebook - also der Mutterfirma
| von WhatsApp - verbietet, personenbezogene Daten von WhatsApp
| zu >>eigenen Zwecken<< zu verarbeiten.
|
| Gemeint ist damit, dass Facebook jene Daten zum Beispiel nicht
| fur sein Anzeigengeschaft nutzen darf. "_
|
| Roughly translated as: Whatsapp is not allowed to share
| personal user data with Facebook for Facebooks own use, for
| example Facebook cannot collect data for the purpose of
| advertisement (and my guess is any other form of monetization).
| Facebook says further down in the article they currently don't
| share data between the services for those purposes.
|
| I also think you're confused about the scope. It's no problem
| that WhatsApp uses its own userdata, the problem is WhatsApp
| sharing data with Facebook, which is a distinct service.
|
| https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/apps/whatsapp-hamburger-date...
| thamer wrote:
| Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for the details!
| amaccuish wrote:
| Fantastic news and really ideally the whole purchase should be
| reversed (and obviously more ideally never allowed to happen in
| the first place)
| throwawaysea wrote:
| To take this further, we also need to reverse other purchases
| like Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, Zenimax, Doubleclick, PA Semi,
| and so on. We also need a new vocabulary and new concepts. We
| shouldn't rely on traditional notions of monopoly market share
| or "consumer harm" to decide when an acquisition/merger/stake
| should be allowed. We need a new definition to prevent gigantic
| conglomerates with immense market power, and then we need to
| enforce that law aggressively, in splitting up existing
| companies and scrutinizing future deals.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Reasonably anticipated future consumer harm sounds like a
| good model to me, IMO.
|
| For instance, if we can reasonably assume an acquisition will
| lead to the potential for future harm through accumulation of
| power, influence, data, etc, that should be sufficient to
| block it.
|
| Mergers are in and of themselves simply recognizing an
| efficiency of scale. It should be possible for a business to
| achieve success without that shortcut, broadly speaking. Once
| they're big enough already, that is.
|
| This seems to tie in nicely to the recent narrative that
| efficiency is the opposite of resiliency, and that maybe not
| all efficiencies are good.
| tchalla wrote:
| Another Source -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-11/facebook-...
|
| > Johannes Caspar, who heads Hamburg's privacy authority, issued
| a three-month emergency ban, prohibiting Facebook from continuing
| with the data collection. He also asked a panel of European Union
| data regulators to take action and issue a ruling across the
| 27-nation bloc. The new WhatsApp terms enabling the data scoop
| are invalid because they are intransparent, inconsistent and
| overly broad, he said.
| humanlion87 wrote:
| > Facebook's WhatsApp unit called Caspar's claims "wrong" and
| said the order won't stop the roll-out of the new terms.
|
| I don't understand how Facebook says this order will not stop
| the roll-out. Are they implying that the authority has no power
| to implement/enforce the ban?
| Jonanin wrote:
| They incorrectly assumed (like much of the media) that this
| update was about sharing data of personal messages with
| Facebook, when it is in fact not.
| zwaps wrote:
| It is, but not yet in the EU.
|
| It literally says : we will share everything with Facebook
| as soon as the EU allows. Right now we do not. But we
| might.
|
| I mean it's written there.
| tpush wrote:
| Where does it literally say that?
| zwaps wrote:
| I quote from their website
|
| ------
|
| Today, WhatsApp does not share your personal information
| with Facebook to improve your Facebook product
| experiences or provide you more relevant Facebook ad
| experiences on Facebook. This is a result of discussions
| with the Irish Data Protection Commission and other Data
| Protection Authorities in Europe. We're always working on
| new ways to improve how you experience WhatsApp and the
| other Facebook Company Products you use. Should we choose
| to share such data with the Facebook Companies for this
| purpose in the future, we will only do so when we reach
| an understanding with the Irish Data Protection
| Commission on a future mechanism to enable such use.
| We'll keep you updated on new experiences we offer and
| our information practices.
|
| ------------
|
| This is legalese for pretty much what I posted. In
| particular, the keep you update here does not necessarily
| mean you get to agree to a new privacy policy, as the
| current policy does not include a commitment not to share
| data (for ads etc) with facebook in the first place. This
| statement is deviously placed outside the privacy policy!
|
| Also further up they say that they associate the whatsapp
| profile with any facebook profile in the
| household/net/vicinity. To be clear, they do this now.
| Not in the future.
| zwaps wrote:
| Oh just on case you are unsure what will happen with all
| this, it's the following:
|
| In the near future, they will start sharing all that
| juicy data with facebook based on some made up precedent,
| new technical justification, some claim to pseudonymity,
| or discussion with some Irish politician or whatnot.
|
| After being found out, they will then eventually
| apologize, do better next time and pay the fine, which
| pales in comparison to the profit gained from that data.
|
| Just as they are now replying to an order from a data
| protection official with: 'Lol nope'
| mseri wrote:
| CNBC provides [1] links to the original source of the news [2]
|
| [1]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/11/facebook-has-been-told-to-
| st... [2]: https://datenschutz-
| hamburg.de/pressemitteilungen/2021/05/20...
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(page generated 2021-05-11 23:00 UTC)