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Facebook bans Signal's attempt to run transparent Instagram ad campaign

Signal wanted to run an honest ad campaign and Facebook didn't like it, so the ads were banned.



Encrypted instant messaging app Signal has tried to run a series of Instagram ads to show the amount of data the social media platform and its parent company Facebook collect about users and how it uses the data to push targeted ads. But that attempt was quickly shut down by Facebook, Signal said in a blog post.

Signal explained how it created some targeted ads featuring its own branding to illustrate that if an ad was being used to target a K-pop fan, it would say so. Or if the user was a teacher, it would also say so.

"We created a multi-variant targeted ad designed to show you the personal data that Facebook collects about you and sells access to," Signal said.

"The ad would simply display some of the information collected about the viewer which the advertising platform uses. Facebook was not into that idea.

"Facebook is more than willing to sell visibility into people's lives, unless it's to tell people about how their data is being used. Being transparent about how ads use people's data is apparently enough to get banned; in Facebook's world, the only acceptable usage is to hide what you're doing from your audience."

Signal has recently gained a flood of new users after Facebook-owned WhatsApp announced new terms of service that would allow it to share user profile data with Facebook in some circumstances. The new terms are due to take effect on May 15.

Signal became the fastest growing app in Q1 2021, according to mobile ad analytics App Annie.

Last month, Signal exposed it was possible to gain arbitrary code execution through Cellebrite tools. The tools are used to pull data out of phones the user has in their possession.

Signal CEO Moxie Marlinspike said that Cellebrite contains "many opportunities for exploitation" and he thought Cellebrite should have been more careful when creating their forensic tools.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/faceb...o-run-transparent-instagram-ad-campaign/

Is WhatsApp Really 'Lying' To You?
WhatsApp has suddenly been accused of seriously misleading its 2 billion users. The Facebook-owned platform promises it cannot read your messages. Not so, is the shocking new allegation from a major rival, "you're lying."

WhatsApp already warns users that such backups fall outside its end-to-end encryption. But more provocatively, the screenshot message also alleges that "WhatApp can access this chat because we can restore it on a clean device using just our phone numbers."


https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdof...after-facebook-backlash/?sh=393ef8c762e4



Common Sense Prevails As Users See That There Are Plenty Of Alternatives To WhatsApp
Ever since Facebook, after paying billions of dollars for WhatsApp, began demanding that the instant messaging app deliver profitability, things seem to be returning to a common sense principle that should never have been abandoned: instant messaging apps are not meant to be profitable, but to facilitate communication between people.

Meanwhile, some of WhatsApp's already well-established competitors, such as Telegram or Signal, are out there ready to offer an alternative, and have seen downloads grown by 1,200% since WhatsApp began announcing changes to its policies. In both cases we are talking about applications that do their job, unsurprisingly, very well: encrypted, secure, and free of the threat posed by attempts to monetize their users' data.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/enriqu...lternatives-to-whatsapp/?sh=69409f091034



WhatsApp delays enforcement of new privacy rules in Brazil
The full enforcement of WhatsApp's new privacy policy has been delayed in Brazil as local authorities investigate the data privacy implications to users of the app's new rules.

From the consumer protection and defense standpoint, the agencies noted that WhatsApp failed to provide clear information in relation to what types of data will be treated by WhatsApp and the purpose of such procedures.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/whatsapp-delays-enforcement-of-new-privacy-rules-in-brazil/



Argentina orders Facebook to suspend WhatsApp data sharing
The suspension will last at least six months and aims to prevent "the abuse of a dominant position," said a resolution published in the official bulletin.

It expressed concern for the potential to exploit users and exclude competitors, and said ultimately that could affect "general economic interests." Argentina is not the only country to crack down on Facebook's attempt to share users' data between its various apps as the United States, India, Brazil and Germany have also take similar measures.
https://brandequity.economictimes.i...o-suspend-whatsapp-data-sharing/82759050



WhatsApp installs drop as rivals Signal and Telegram see app downloads skyrocket
In light of controversial privacy updates by popular messaging app WhatsApp that would give its parent Facebook more access to user data, the company has been facing some backlash.

According to Sensor Tower data, people have been flocking to use alternatives like Telegram and Signal since the start of 2021. Telegram installs rose 98% to over 161 million compared to 2020 and Signal saw downloads surge a whopping 1,192% to 64.6 million. At the same time, WhatsApp downloads dropped 43%.
https://www.businessofapps.com/news...nd-telegram-see-app-downloads-skyrocket/



Microsoft Teams just became a WhatsApp alternative
Microsoft Teams is now available for personal communication with family and friends for free, offering a lot more features than WhatsApp.

Today, Microsoft has announced that Teams is now available for personal use as well, and it is free on mobile (both Android and iOS), desktop as well as the web. So, what features do you get on Microsoft Teams? Well, you can chat with friends and family members, to begin with. And even if they don't have the app on their phone, Teams will let you communicate with them via SMS. But that's not all. You can create tasks and to-do lists directly from chats, making it easier to collaborate on a family event such as your next barbecue party.
https://pocketnow.com/microsoft-teams-just-became-a-whatsapp-alternative

FaceTime finally coming to Windows and Android

For years, FaceTime and FaceTime Audio have been the Apple-exclusive mediums for communication. Until now, you needed an iPhone, iPad, iPod, or a Mac to make and receive FaceTime calls. That ends today because Apple wants to expand the availability of FaceTime to Android and Windows using a brand-new web interface.



The web interface brings FaceTime calls to those who do not have an iPhone or Mac. Apple made this unexpected announcement during the keynote speech of WWDC 2021, where it also announced iOS 15, iPadOS 15, tvOS 15, and macOS Monterey. However, the company has not specified when FaceTime for the web would be made available, but the fall of 2021 is an educated guess.

The decision to expand FaceTime to non-Apple devices is considered a part of the move to plot FaceTime as a direct competitor to Zoom and Google Meet. Unlike Zoom and Google Meet, FaceTime now includes many innovative features as well.

https://news.thewindowsclub.com/facetime-finally-coming-to-windows-and-android-105797/

Sorry iPhone Users-You Will Not Get WhatsApp's Stunning New Update
So, this is nasty new surprise for millions of iPhone users. It seems that WhatsApp has fixed the most alarming security issue plaguing its 2 billion users. But not for you-this absolutely critical new fix is Android only. Your serious problem is not going away.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdof...pp-security-update-leak/?sh=70170e467535

Facebook expands Shops to WhatsApp, Marketplace in commerce push
Facebook Inc is expanding its "Shops" feature to its messaging app WhatsApp in several countries and to Facebook Marketplace in the United States, the company said on Tuesday as it announced changes to its commerce tools.
https://www.reuters.com/business/me...marketplace-commerce-updates-2021-06-22/

Here're Some Reasons To Ditch WhatsApp and Move Your Communications Elsewhere
Some security lapses and information retrieval from the privacy of WhatsApp chats recentlybecame the big concern that has forced users to consider the shift. Know where and how to shift your data.
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/375348

Telegram adds group video calls, screen sharing, and a bunch of new features to take on WhatsApp
The popular encrypted messaging app, Telegram unveiled a group video call feature for its users to compete with digital giants Zoom and WhatsApp. Telegram users had been requesting this feature for over a year, and it has finally been introduced.
https://www.msn.com/en-in/money/tec...-features-to-take-on-whatsapp/ar-AALummx

Controversial WhatsApp policy change hit with consumer law complaint in Europe
The consumer protection association umbrella group, the BEUC, said today that together with eight of its member organizations it has filed a complaint with the European Commission and the European network of consumer authorities:

"WhatsApp remains very vague about the sections it has removed and the ones it has added. It is up to users to seek out this information by themselves. Ultimately, it is almost impossible for users to clearly understand what is new and what has been amended. The opacity of the new policies is in breach of Article 5 of the UCTD [Unfair Contract Terms Directive] and is also a misleading and unfair practice prohibited under Article 5 and 6 of the UCPD [Unfair Commercial Practices Directive]."

In the meanwhile, calls for Europe's regulators to work together to better tackle the challenges posed by platform power are growing, with a number of regional competition authorities and privacy regulators actively taking steps to dial up their joint working - in a bid to ensure that expertise across distinct areas of law doesn't stay siloed and, thereby, risk disjointed enforcement, with conflicting and contradictory outcomes for Internet users.

There seems to be a growing understanding on both sides of the Atlantic for a joined up approach to regulating platform power and ensuring powerful platforms don't simply get let off the hook.
https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/12/c...t-with-consumer-law-complaint-in-europe/

The Consumer Voice @beuc:
Here's our letter to @EU_Justice about WhatsApp. We're filing a complaint against the Facebook-owned company for aggressive practices and unclear & misleading changes in its policies
https://twitter.com/beuc/status/1414530718164824064

WhatsApp has a HUGE loophole that lets people spy on you - and it's racing to fix it
WHATSAPP is working on a new feature to fix a huge security loophole in its encryption system.

Right now, WhatsApp chats on the app are end-to-end encrypted but if they're backed up into the cloud, authorities can get a search warrant to access those messages and media files. Whether you back up your WhatsApp chats to iCloud or Google Drive, it's possible for law enforcement to request access. There's also concerns that cloud services can be hacked. Apple and Google do have their own security measures so chats are pretty safe but never completely out of reach of cybercriminals.

According to WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is working on a way to independently encrypt chats before they're sent to the cloud.
https://www.the-sun.com/tech/3309180/whatsapp-security-flaw-cloud-encryption-fix/

WhatsApp just blocked two million accounts for breaking tough new rules - don't be next
WHATSAPP has just blocked two million users from sending messages after it was discovered they were breaking strict new rules.

WhatsApp has gone on a blocking spree, purging millions of its two billion users for breaking a little-known rule on the app intended to stop the spread of hoaxes. Over two million accounts have been blocked from WhatsApp in just one month for violating the rule. The company said it had targeted users who were found to be sending a "high and abnormal rate of messages".

What counts as too many messages? Luckily, you'd have to work pretty hard to fall foul of the rules. The company said over 95% of the bans were "due to the unauthorized use of automated or bulk messaging", not regular texting.
https://www.express.co.uk/life-styl...hatsApp-iPhone-Android-ban-block-warning

Former WhatsApp employees target Facebook with private social network
What if the WhatsApp team made Facebook? HalloApp is a private, ad-free social network. HalloApp also promises end-to-end encrypted chats and that it won't capture additional data.

"Imagine your friends online were your real friends. Imagine your feed wasn't filled with people and posts you didn't care about," reads an explanation on the post. "Imagine scrolling through meaningful moments and seeing what you wanted you to see - not what the algorithm wanted you to see. Imagine not being treated like a product." The app itself is pretty basic, featuring four tabs at the bottom (home, groups, chats, settings), a shortcut to add a new post or images, and two icons at the top (one to invite contacts to the app and one for an activity/notification menu).

HalloApp is now available to download for Android and iOS.
https://www.androidauthority.com/halloapp-facebook-rival-whatsapp-1646493/

Report: Facebook wants to analyze encrypted WhatsApp messages for ads

- Facebook has hired a team of researchers for the purpose of analyzing WhatsApp encryption.

- The goal would be to have ways to data-mine WhatsApp messages without actually decrypting them.

- One report alleges that Facebook is doing this for ad purposes.

https://www.androidauthority.com/whatsapp-encryption-ads-2728774/

How Facebook Undermines Privacy Protections for Its 2 Billion WhatsApp Users

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. Acknowledging that "we don't currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services," the Facebook CEO wrote that "I believe the future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever. This is the future I hope we will help bring about. We plan to build this the way we've developed WhatsApp."

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."

WhatsApp emphasizes this point so consistently that a flag with a similar assurance automatically appears on-screen before users send messages: "No one outside of this chat, not even WhatsApp, can read or listen to them."

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.

Policing users while assuring them that their privacy is sacrosanct makes for an awkward mission at WhatsApp. A 49-slide internal company marketing presentation from December, obtained by ProPublica, emphasizes the "fierce" promotion of WhatsApp's "privacy narrative." It compares its "brand character" to "the Immigrant Mother" and displays a photo of Malala ​​Yousafzai, who survived a shooting by the Taliban and became a Nobel Peace Prize winner, in a slide titled "Brand tone parameters." The presentation does not mention the company's content moderation efforts.

WhatsApp's director of communications, Carl Woog, acknowledged that teams of contractors in Austin and elsewhere review WhatsApp messages to identify and remove "the worst" abusers. But Woog told ProPublica that the company does not consider this work to be content moderation, saying: "We actually don't typically use the term for WhatsApp." The company declined to make executives available for interviews for this article, but responded to questions with written comments. "WhatsApp is a lifeline for millions of people around the world," the company said. "The decisions we make around how we build our app are focused around the privacy of our users, maintaining a high degree of reliability and preventing abuse."

WhatsApp's denial that it moderates content is noticeably different from what Facebook Inc. says about WhatsApp's corporate siblings, Instagram and Facebook. The company has said that some 15,000 moderators examine content on Facebook and Instagram, neither of which is encrypted. It releases quarterly transparency reports that detail how many accounts Facebook and Instagram have "actioned" for various categories of abusive content. There is no such report for WhatsApp.

Deploying an army of content reviewers is just one of the ways that Facebook Inc. has compromised the privacy of WhatsApp users. Together, the company's actions have left WhatsApp - the largest messaging app in the world, with two billion users - far less private than its users likely understand or expect. 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.) Continue reading this article in ProPublica: https://www.propublica.org/article/...ections-for-its-2-billion-whatsapp-users

1,000 Facebook Workers Are Paid to Read Supposedly Private WhatsApp Messages: Report

• A investigation released Tuesday claims Facebook employs more than 1,000 workers who reportedly read through millions of messages on the data-encrypted WhatsApp messaging service.
• ProPublica produced the report that looked into Facebook's management of WhatsApp, a global messaging subsidiary with around two billion users that is promoted for being an especially private network.
• After Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg promised users that their data would remain safe and unscreened by the company.
• Contrary to his pledge, ProPublica's report said that Facebook has hired more than 1,000 contractors in Texas, Ireland and Singapore to look through users' content.

Zuckerberg once cited WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption as a feature he was planning on bringing to Instagram and Facebook Messenger. The encryption is said to make all messages on the app unreadable until the message reached its intended recipients. Before a user sends a message, a flag appears on the screen that reads, "No one outside of this chat, not even WhatsApp, can read or listen to them."

WhatsApp has also been promoted as being so secure that not even its parent company can open the messages. Indeed, Zuckerberg said during testimony to the U.S. Senate in 2018, "We don't see any of the content in WhatsApp."

In one instance, WhatsApp user data was given to prosecutors in a case against a Treasury Department employee who leaked confidential documents to a media outlet. Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, has previously acknowledged that the company has worked with law enforcement. "I think we absolutely can have security and safety for people through end-to-end encryption and work with law enforcement to solve crimes," Cathcart said during a YouTube interview in July with the think tank Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

One social media user reacted to the news of the report by noting the seemingly contradictory assertions from Facebook and WhatsApp. He wrote, "Apparently, WhatsApp can't see your messages, yet they have a team of people who can see your messages and provide their content to law enforcement when necessary."

In an email to Newsweek, a WhatsApp spokesperson said workers looking into reported messages that are forwarded to them does not interfere with the service's encryption and privacy features. "WhatsApp provides a way for people to report spam or abuse, which includes sharing the most recent messages in a chat," the spokesperson wrote. "This feature is important for preventing the worst abuse on the internet. We strongly disagree with the notion that accepting reports a user chooses to send us is incompatible with end-to-end encryption."

https://www.newsweek.com/1000-faceb...private-whatsapp-messages-report-1626856

You told us: You were using WhatsApp's rivals even before Facebook crashed

Telegram and Signal already prove pretty popular with Android Authority readers.

The planet came to a grinding halt last week as Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram all went offline. The issue was caused by a troublesome configuration change, a blip that might've cost Facebook and its properties big in terms of revenue and users.

Telegram announced soon after that it added 70 million users to its ranks in the wake of the crash, and we imagine other WhatsApp rivals like Signal also onboarded their fair share. But were you one of these people who signed up for these two WhatsApp rivals or an alternative chat app during this period? We asked our readers in this recent poll, and the results are now in.


Did you sign up for Signal or Telegram when Facebook services went down?


Results

We saw over 1,700 votes on this poll published on October 6, 2021. A whopping 62.3% of those respondents use "one of both of these services" even before the great Facebook outage of 2021.

Interestingly, 17.9% of readers decided to wait it out and resisted the urge to sign up for an alternative messaging platform.

A total of 18.3% of readers signed up for either Telegram or Signal, with the majority (10.3%) going for the latter. Finally, 1.5% of the respondents on this poll signed up for another messaging service altogether.


Comments

- Stanley Jason: Basically, Signal is just one feature of Telegram, which is Secret Chats. So I rather stick to a more versatile app.

- FNU Vikas: I deleted WhatsApp account, when they updated their T&C to share data with FB. I switched to Telegram, it's light years ahead of WhatsApp.

- roaduardo: There's no point if you can't convince your contacts to also make the switch. That's the biggest problem here. It's all about what the people you speak with consistently. What service they use. And if you want to use a new one? Good luck trying to bring them along.

- Bmswad1: Discord is also good.

- Sang Ngaihte: Google Messages� I like that app. I can send images and video clips. As long as I have an internet connection.


https://www.androidauthority.com/facebook-whatsapp-crash-telegram-signal-poll-results-3038040/