Facebook announced on Wednesday that it plans to acquire WhatsApp,
a mobile messaging service with about 450 million monthly users, for
$12 billion in shares, $4 billion in cash as well as $3 billion in stock
options.
The deal could raise important data protection issues because the
personal data of its users will likely be merged with Facebook data,
said Thilo Weichert, data protection commissioner for the German state
of Schleswig-Holstein.
When communication metadata and content of both services is merged, it
can be used for profiling and commercially exploited for advertising
purposes, Weichert said.
A Facebook spokeswoman declined to comment on Weichert’s concerns and referred to Facebook’s conference call about the acquisition on Wednesday, in which Facebook said that WhatsApp will continue to be run as an independent business.
WhatsApp said in a blog post on Wednesday ”nothing” will change for users.
The company states in its privacy policy
that it will not sell or share personally identifiable information such
as mobile phone numbers with third-party companies for their commercial
or marketing use without consent. But it may share that information
with third party service providers “to the extent that it is reasonably
necessary to perform, improve or maintain the WhatsApp Service.”
WhatsApp also says it will not use that information itself for
commercial or marketing messages without consent, “except as part of a
specific program or feature for which users will have the ability to
opt-in or opt-out.”
It says it also may use both personally identifiable information and
certain non-personally identifiable information (such as anonymous user
usage data, cookies, IP addresses, browser type, clickstream data, etc.)
to improve the quality and design of its site and service as well as to
create new features, promotions, functionality, and services by
storing, tracking, and analyzing user preferences and trends.
In addition to having issues with possible profiling, Weichert also
highlighted that both companies are based in the U.S., where there are
less strict data protection laws than in Europe. He added that the
services “refuse to comply with European and German data protection
requirements.”
German data protection authorities and consumer organizations have been embroiled in privacy litigation with Facebook for years.
The Germans want Facebook to adhere to German data protection laws.
Facebook has been trying to evade this by arguing that German law does
not apply to it because its European headquarters in Ireland is
processing all European user data. So far one appeals court has ruled in Facebook’s favor while another appeals court recently ruled that Facebook should comply with German law.
Weichert does not only have issues with Facebook in this matter, he
said. WhatsApp is an insecure way of communicating and has had very
serious security and privacy issues, he said.
WhatsApp, for instance, had a major design flaw
in its cryptographic implementation that could allow attackers to
decrypt intercepted messages. The company hasn’t been transparent about
how it solves such security problems, Weichert said.
So far, WhatsApp hasn’t been doing much to exploit their user data for
commercial purposes, Weichert said, adding that the Facebook deal
probably will put an end to that.
Therefore, WhatsApp users should switch to services they can trust, at
least if the confidentiality of their own communication is worth
something to them, Weichert said.
He strongly recommended Germans to start using German or Europe-based
services that are transparent about their security and are subject to an
effective data protection regime.
This seems to be the case with the Swiss services Threema and myEnigma, which are subject to the Swiss Federal Act on Data Protection,
Weichert said. Threema has been used within his office, he said, adding
that he had some reservations in his advise because his staff had not
been able to review the source code of the services to verify the
security themselves. “But we have had the same issues with Facebook and
WhatsApp,” he said.
Both Threema and myEnigma use end-to-end encryption and say they have no
way to decrypt messages if law enforcement tries to force them to,
because they don’t know their users’ private keys, according to their
websites.
MyEnigma is available for free for iOS, Android and BlackBerry. Its
security is based on open standards “which are used today to protect
classified information at governmental level,” according to its website.
The service also protects all communication with an independent
encryption layer to provide a dual-encryption channel for all data, it
said, adding that it is only relays the encrypted messages. The service
is made by the Swiss company Qnective, which offers secure
communications to governments and military organizations.
Threema was developed by software development company Kasper Systems and
is available for $1.99 on iOS or Android. It has asymmetric
cryptography designed to ensure that only the intended receiver can read
messages, and photos, videos and current location can be shared with
the same encryption, according to its site.
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