I am trying to convince a few European contacts that they should leave whatsap behind and am looking for some articles that discuss fb’s use of data. The common response that I get is that it does not matter because GDPR protects Europeans. I respond to this with the article above. I would appreciate suggestions of other articles that shine light on what fb is doing.
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That was a good read, I liked the flowchart of potential paths his data ended up at the aggregator company.
While Android and iOS now are both easy to reset the advertising ID I wonder if they’ll ever consider going without it (doubtful but one can still hope). In the meantime I’m glad there’s FOSS projects that can one day replace/supplement my use case so things like the article describe become a bit harder.
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I am more aware of an answer that they don’t care much. If they are into the matter of GDPR you might access them. Using US Services is currently in a grey zone in Europe as Safe Harbor and Privacy Shield were dropped and services from the US are no longer automatically seen as being equivalent on data protection legislation. Also due to the Cloud Act no US service provider can guarantee that they will obey the GDPR in case the US government wants to access data even from servers within the EU maintained by US companies.
This discussion is very relevant as some federal states in Germany try to get Microsoft Office 365 as the standard solution in schools, replacing currently used open source software which on the other hand can be self-hosted by the schools / government and prevent commercialize children data or tie them to a certain proprietary product universe.
That is the exact opposite direction in which they should be going!
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This article wasn’t bad either: https://gizmodo.com/this-was-whatsapps-plan-all-along-1846060382
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Ah I found this article at Mastodon and finally found this again here. Thanks for sharing.
And while we’re aggregating, here are a couple of oldies:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210108233309/http://www.mattmckeon.com/facebook-privacy/
- Evolution of FB privacy erosion in a graphic is a bit old but a good visual (using the archive.org version because had trouble connecting)
- Some of the basics in easy read form, how FB is intentionally and unintentionally affecting us
- A timeline (until 2018) of how badly FB handles privacy
All are from years back. So there is precedence.
And you should take a look at the EPIC (Electronic Privacy Information Center) site of FB privacy stuff (they have other privacy projects as well), which is current.
A more scholarly read on trust design: https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4679&context=caselrev
[edit to add: a reminder, that most of the underlying features and aspects are in other sites too, and in the background ecology of information markets]
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These are really great resources! Thanks!
Facebook is so f-ing evil…
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Come on, Giant Rolling Snowball! 
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Facebook is not only nasty, but their security is not so good…
Let’s hope it’s the personal data of Facebook users ONLY, and not of non-users who had their data slurped up from the users’ contacts!
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I mean it depends on you you slice it. Is the FB users phone book the FB users personal information since it’s their phone book and their contacts, or is it each person’s personal information that is in said phone book.
IMO it’s both, but omitting one perspective or the other could result in different results when reporting on the data…
Just wondering aloud, but the article says 533 million users are in the leaked database. It also says in an unrelated segment of that same site that there are 2.3-ish billion users on Facebook. I wonder what the difference is between the ~23% that got their information leaked and the ~77% that didn’t…?
ZUCKED ! use HashCat only for emergencies 
At this security researcher’s website, you can check your email address against known data breaches to see if and how it was compromised:
See the FAQs, and the “About” and “Privacy” sections. You can also check for compromised passwords on another tab.