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Home » No, Facebook Isn’t Reading Your Private WhatsApp Messages. The Problem Is Much Worse

No, Facebook Isn’t Reading Your Private WhatsApp Messages. The Problem Is Much Worse

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Facebook’s biggest problem is that it’s too easy to assume the worst about the world’s largest social media company.

On Tuesday, ProPublica reported that Facebook employs 1,000 people whose job it is to read WhatsApp messages reported by users. That last part is important, and we’ll come back to it in a minute. The piece, entitled: “How Facebook Undermines Privacy Protections for Its 2 Billion WhatsApp Users,” would lead you to believe that the publication discovered a new way Facebook is involved in a gross invasion of user privacy.

I think, by now, we’ve all come to recognize that Facebook’s entire business model is, in fact, an invasion of user privacy. That’s not something unique to this situation. But, in this case, it’s not exactly right. More importantly, the fact that it seemed entirely possible is the real issue. No one trusts Facebook, even when it’s arguably doing the right thing–which I think is true in this case.

Here’s what I mean:

When you send messages using WhatsApp, they are encrypted, meaning that only the sender and recipient are able to read them. WhatsApp can’t read them, and neither can Facebook. It’s one of the reasons WhatsApp is the world’s largest messaging service. It earned users’ trust by protecting their privacy.

That was one of the reasons it was such a big deal when Facebook bought the company in 2015. People rightly worried that WhatsApp’s commitment to encryption and privacy might change. Remarkably, it hasn’t. That isn’t even really the issue here, even though the headline might lead you to believe it is.

While your messages are encrypted, when a user reports a message as abusive or harassment, those messages can be reviewed by a human. ProPublica’s report suggests that means that while messages are end-to-end encrypted, this represents a backdoor. Except, it doesn’t.

Think of it this way. I have four young children. On occasion, because they are kids, they do things they shouldn’t. Sometimes they say mean things to each other. Most of the time they are savvy enough to say them outside of mom or dad’s earshot. In that case, I have no way of knowing what’s happening in their conversation. Their “messages” are kept secret, at least from me.

Sometimes, however…

Read The Full Article at Inc.

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