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Ask HN: Have you accepted the TOS that give FB access to your WhatsApp data?

141 points| timdaub | 4 years ago

I noticed that I'm still clicking away the once proposed dialogue of Whatsapp to give all my data away to Facebook.

I have not accepted it and I keep clicking away. And you?

188 comments

order
[+] verytrivial|4 years ago|reply
Never accepted it. Moved to Signal. Didn't install WhatsApp when I upgraded my phone a few months ago. "unfriended" absolutely everyone on Facebook and manually destroyed all my Facebook activities going back to the creation of my account there. Absolutely all of it. The more difficult the process became, the more I realized how coercive they were in welding you into their network. I maintain an empty shell of an account filled with "creative" metadata due to some public groups and clubs that do not have the resources to manage their own presence online.

Suffice to say I did not respond well to the TOS change.

[+] buro9|4 years ago|reply
Did the same. No longer on any part of Facebook offerings and no apps installed. Banned from my home network too. The only thing left is an empty WhatsApp account with a status telling people to find me on Signal.
[+] s7r|4 years ago|reply
You keep the shell because you're helping those groups maintain their own presence online? I'm looking into non-FB ways to do this, feel free to contact me, would be glad to explore and chat on it
[+] setum|4 years ago|reply
I didn’t all this while, but just yesterday when my toddler was playing with my phone, the pop up opened and it got clicked as my toddler was repeatedly beating on the screen.

I guess this was their intention all along by showing repeated pop up windows.

[+] Wowfunhappy|4 years ago|reply
I wonder if you could contact support and explain the situation. They can't ignore the fact that the agreement isn't valid if you weren't the one who clicked the button... right?
[+] bko|4 years ago|reply
Can someone give me a simple non-cynical explanation on what the update in terms is about? From my understanding, it only pertains to communications with businesses and give them some Facbeook tools to manage their communications with customers.
[+] jeltz|4 years ago|reply
A possibility that I can see is simply that they want to add a bot API which is just a simple rest API and not E2E encrypted. And if they remove the E2EE that means FB will be able to read all messages for businesses using their bot API.

Correct me if I am wrong but my understanding is that to run a WhatsApp bot you currently basically need to run a version of the whole app.

No idea if my theory is correct but if it is I wonder why they won't just provide a good library which implrments their protocol, E2E encryption and everything.

[+] TrianguloY|4 years ago|reply
Not sure outside Europe, but here last time I checked it basically said that whenever you talk with a business account you are basically talking with Facebook, otherwise nothing else changes.

Still will be nice to have another opinion.

[+] gertrunde|4 years ago|reply
My understanding is the same. Facebook are providing hosting services to businesses so they can centralise their business WhatsApp messaging in one place.

This means that when a message is decrypted by a recipient, that decryption is taking place within a Facebook service, rather than on an end user device.

Unfortunately, as you say, cynicism is a problem with anything linked to a company like Facebook/Meta that has earned a certain amount of distrust.

[+] Karsteski|4 years ago|reply
I straight up deleted my WhatsApp and Facebook accounts when they announced those plans. Thankfully I was mostly able to move everyone I care about from WhatsApp to Signal. It's been smooth sailing ever since, and I'm step further from having a tech giant control my life.
[+] ItsBob|4 years ago|reply
Nope, I still click the "X" in the top corner every time I open it.

However, I use WhatsApp sparingly - my mum and one friend, that's it.

At some point I'll remove it completely.

[+] rg111|4 years ago|reply
Migrated completely from WhatsApp to Signal and Telegram.

I still run WhatsApp for the people I absolutely have to.

For that, I am using an old, and almost bust phone I have from 5 years ago.

No spyware on my primary phone.

[+] jimkleiber|4 years ago|reply
I think the question is asking one thing and asserting another:

- "have you accepted the TOS?" as the question

- "the TOS gives FB access to (all) your WhatsApp data" as the assertion

My questions: do you believe that this new TOS gives FB access to my WhatsApp data? If so, to which of my data? All of it?

I personally don't believe this TOS gives FB access to all of the communication data I have on WhatsApp, and thus rendering e2ee useless, yet, I'm open to learning how I might be wrong on that.

[+] throwawayboise|4 years ago|reply
Why does anyone believe that FB is not trawling the data anyway? Is there some technical barrier preventing it?
[+] InsomniacL|4 years ago|reply
Nobody is talking about how ridiculous it is that none of these messaging apps talk to the other.

everyone i know uses whatsapp and nothing else, no real choice until the apps talk to each other.

[+] sh4un|4 years ago|reply
This. Exactly.

Problem is that everyone knows the spyware issue, but if you leave WhatsApp, install every secure messenger that no one you know uses, you'll be a lonely guy.

Real security it turns out is just not communicating.

[+] glitchcrab|4 years ago|reply
Why would WhatsApp ever have this functionality? It would do serious damage to the walled garden which they've so successfully built.
[+] codethief|4 years ago|reply
How would, say, Signal "talk" to WhatsApp/Facebook/Instagram/Telegram/… without compromising its security guarantees?
[+] theden|4 years ago|reply
They should really have a "don't ask again" button. Is it really opt-in if they ask the user every time they open the app? It feels like it's opt-in by attrition.
[+] shawnz|4 years ago|reply
It's not opt-in and they never claimed such a thing, it is a mandatory update to their terms of service for all users.
[+] janto|4 years ago|reply
I actually find some joy out of repeatedly seeing and rejecting the dialogue.
[+] tomerv|4 years ago|reply
People seeing this post are split to 2 groups:

- Those who didn't accept the new terms are glad to use the opportunity to virtue-signal.

- Those who accepted the new terms are afraid to admit so.

I'll bite the bullet: I accepted the terms.

If you want more honest opinions, you should probably post an anonymous poll.

[+] pmontra|4 years ago|reply
I'm in a third group. I keep using WA or I'll have to call friends daily to keep up with them, until they block my number :-)

However I never accepted the new ToS. WA keep asking me to accept them and I don't (can't remember the actual wordings). It has been like that for months. I've even chatted with a business a couple of weeks ago. It seems they are doing like when they were asking for 1 Euro per year. They eventually gave up and never interrupted the service. The network effects of losing users work against them.

[+] sh4un|4 years ago|reply
I don't run Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp on my phone.

I am not sure how hard it is to grasp that some people just don't use any of it. But I guess this is where you come to virtue signal about virtue signalling.

Besides, when you boot up your phone and you see the Android logo, you're fucked anyways.

[+] cillian64|4 years ago|reply
Exactly this. I accepted it because I got sick of the popup and wanted to talk to my family without having to try to convince them to move to another platform. I’m mildly annoyed about it but it didn’t seem like an issue worth spending time or effort worrying about too much.
[+] fsflover|4 years ago|reply
This is not a poll. The interesting part about this post is why people accept it or what they do in order to not accept it. You did not contribute anything interesting by saying "I accepted the terms".
[+] spot5010|4 years ago|reply
I’m in a third category where I have not accepted just because I still have an option not to. Waiting to see what happens.

I depend on WhatsApp heavily to keep in touch with friends and family and cannot imagine not using it (it would require everyone switching to signal enmasse).

[+] gefhfff|4 years ago|reply
No, I uninstalled it when Facebook acquired WhatsApp.

I switched to Telegram, Wire and Threema.

When Matrix became viable in 2020, I switched to it.

Though, I still have a few contacts remaining at Telegram.

[+] boffinism|4 years ago|reply
Yes, because the update doesn't actually substantially affect my privacy. YMMV.
[+] odiroot|4 years ago|reply
I haven't. I also moved WhatsApp into isolated user profile using Island to restrict the access to my data.

On top of that changed permissions: no microphone, no file system, no camera access.

[+] londgine|4 years ago|reply
what is "island"?
[+] GordonS|4 years ago|reply
Nope, I'm still stubbornly dismissing it every time it appears! It's been several months now, I think, and AFAIK nothing bad has happened as a result.
[+] timdaub|4 years ago|reply
yes, nothing bad happened for me neither. Everything seems to work as expected.

Or maybe, everyone that accepted in the meantime has received a brand new Meta VR headset maybe :D?

[+] names_are_hard|4 years ago|reply
I derive a small amount of pleasure from clicking the little x every few days. I have no idea if it does anything, and I imagine at some point they'll just decide I've accepted anyway but I have no intention of agreeing willingly. I like to think that somewhere in Facebook's offices there's a dashboard that shows acceptance rate and I'm doing my part to keep that small % of resistance alive.

I also stopped sharing my contacts with whatsapp around the time the whole fiasco started.

[+] mupuff1234|4 years ago|reply
It's crazy to me that it seems like it's basically a legitimate tactic to hope that users accidentally agree to your TOS.
[+] Toutouxc|4 years ago|reply
Nope, I just deleted my Facebook and WhatsApp accounts and moved to Signal.

My parents, my GF and around 5 friends installed Signal because of me, one friend started calling me instead and the rest... well I guess I wasn't that important to them.

Overall I'm much happier now.

[+] timbaboon|4 years ago|reply
Yeah my gf, granny, and dad are my issue :( so stubborn and refuse to move. Okay granny is technologically unable to really :P
[+] johnflan|4 years ago|reply
Yes, I had to swap to an alternative phone while my phone was been repaired - it seems that it becomes mandatory when moving phone
[+] spot5010|4 years ago|reply
Still haven’t accepted. Waiting to see how long this lasts, and what will Facebook do about it eventually.
[+] mikewarot|4 years ago|reply
No, I haven't installed WhatsApp, nor any Facebook app/program on my laptop.

I always use Facebook via the web, in reverse chronological order. If I suddenly see a stream of old/very interesting stuff, I know I've accidently let the algorithm into my brain, and click on the url again to get back to sanity.

https://www.facebook.com/?sk=h_chr