Setting the record straight

true, but by having my phone number and my friends address book that lists my phone number, you in-fact have my phone number.

We don’t know your home address

You have my friends address book which has my address for my phone number and you have my phone number. So. No. You do in-fact have my home address.

We don’t know where you work

See above

or collect your GPS location

that's what you say, but you really have my GPS location, at least to some degree as sharing my location is one of the features in WhatsApp I used at times.

None of that data has ever been collected and stored by WhatsApp, and we really have no plans to change that.

While I believe you that you so far haven't collected anything, there's nothing to stop your new owners from collecting the data.

This post is complete nonsense and I'm just ever so happy that I have deleted my account the moment the sale went public. Considering the fact that my GF was able to send messages to my account despite myself having deleted it, I doubt that anything was really deleted though. So thanks.

Easy now, you got bought by Facebook. Whatsapp may be retaining it's autonomy (for now), but the speculation that your messaging/other business records would be hooked into the greater Facebook data hoover was ANYTHING BUT baseless, unfounded or irresponsible.

Facebook's business model involves very heavy user surveillance. I'm not even saying that pejoratively, that's just how they operate. C'mon son!

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  F. Mulder

This is the exact difference between privacy-by-policy as opposed to privacy-by-design. If WhatsApp truly wants to make good on its promise, it must deploy real end-to-end encryption such that it can never be in a position to be strong-armed into disclosing personal data, neither by stockholders nor by the government.

It's a shame that they are under the thumb of StaziBook, which will never actually deploy privacy respecting features, since that kind of goes against their business of mining and controlling the data of every single human on this planet.

Security is one area in which I generally don't give people the benefit of the doubt (the burden of proof is on them), and so far, WhatsApp has not done much to prove their trustworthiness[0] in this regard.

[0] Trust encompasses both intent and ability/execution - if either one is lacking, the trust fails.

How deeply? Enough to implement proper end to end encryption? Otherwise, you're just paying lip service to "privacy", just like Facebook and others are. They all say "we value your privacy greatly", but track and mine every single thing you do or say. The facts don't match the words in almost every case.

So show us how much you value our privacy. Implement end to end encryption (by default, obviously - don't pull a Telegram).

Anyone who has ever sold a business (or part of it) knows that new owners exercise control and it's their legally enforceable right to do so.

Appeals to emotion regarding the KGB are great, but you cannot convince me that a company the size of facebook would donate 19B to Whatsapp and expect nothing in return. Furthermore, having been acquired by facebook does not constitute a "partnership", since the decision making power of the founders has quite literally been sold off to the highest bidder.

Doesn't the obligation to the shareholders and investors to make as much return on the investment trump any values the founders may have?

In other words, doesn't the business have to be showing that it's doing the right thing to their investors? Where the right thing means getting NINETEEN Billion dollars.

Edits: Another way of wording my question would be: Could they really have actually said "no" to them, and gotten away with it?

>Respect for your privacy is coded into our DNA

It is not respect for the user's privacy that keeps the NSA, the FSB or any other agency from listening to, storing or censoring your user's communications. Respect for privacy is a good principle, but if the technology does not reflect the principle, it's there only to make some people (founders, employees, investors, customers and users) feel better.

What's the point of buying whatsapp? How does FB make money from those users?

And of course being principled about not tracking or getting more information than necessary and then partnering with the company that does nothing but just that is a bit perplexing to me.

Just because WhatsApp has no plans today doesn't make plans to exercise it tomorrow less viable.

They're not "partnering with", they're being bought. And as a result, they will owned by a company with zero respect for privacy, located in a country with little respect for privacy and the weakest privacy protections in the Western hemisphere. A company who's very core business model exclusively consists of selling their user's privacy to third parties.

WhatsApp's guarantees are worth exactly zero. At best, they are merely honest intentions, but formulated in such a misleading way that they become untrustworthy from the start.

I think this phrasing is the most telling. This is not a partnership. Facebook wholly owns Whatsapp. As soon as Facebook decides that their vision for Whatsapp is more important than the vision laid out in this post, Whatsapp will be powerless to do anything. The fact that Jan Koum now sits on Facebook's board may help to mitigate any change to Whatsapp, but it does not change this fundamental fact.

If you're concerned about Facebook's record on privacy, TextSecure is the way to go. They recently added data messages, so it's no longer tied to SMS only.

(Note: I'm not affiliated with TextSecure in any way.)

I love the "really" there. Even while trying to reassure people, he couldn't resist leaving himself at least a little bit of an out.

Sadly there are 19bn reasons for this situation to change.

I believe you.

However Facebook owns your company now, so the future of WhatsApp is not your call anymore.

I believe you, but I don't believe that Facebook shares your principles.

Will people with platforms ever stop using them to spout self-serving bullshit?