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Whatsapp CEO Leaves Facebook, Says Company Weakened Encryption

Facebook's Cambridge Analytica scandal has been only one part of the company's broader problems. Facebook's also recently been under fire for some bizarre efforts on the security front. The company recently came under fire for pushing a VPN service that actively tracks users around the internet, and for two-factor authentication rollout that wound up inadvertently spamming customers when they provided their cell phone number (the former being intentional, the latter being a bug).

Now the social media giant is under fire after Jan Koum, CEO of the Whatsapp encrypted messaging app acquired by Facebook, announced he would be leaving the company. Koum has accused Facebook of trying to monetize personal data gleaned from the app and for attempting to weaken the encryption at the heart of the messaging platform:

quote:
The independence and protection of its users’ data is a core tenet of WhatsApp that Koum and his co-founder, Brian Acton, promised to preserve when they sold their tiny start-up to Facebook. It doubled down on its pledge by adding encryption in 2016. The clash over data took on additional significance in the wake of revelations in March that Facebook had allowed third parties to mishandle its users’ personal information.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg replied to Koum’s post by crediting Koum with teaching him “about encryption and its ability to take power from centralized systems and put it back in people’s hands. Those values will always be at the heart of WhatsApp."
Granted the founders, who gleaned $19 billion from the sale of the app, probably aren't losing too much sleep over Facebook's policies. But it's another example of how Facebook's claims that privacy is now a top priority tend to fall apart upon even the smallest amount of additional scrutiny. A problem made worse by the fact that Facebook has been working with ISPs like Comcast to erode consumer privacy protections.

Most recommended from 27 comments



winsyrstrife
River City Bounce
Premium Member
join:2002-04-30
Brooklyn, NY

10 recommendations

winsyrstrife

Premium Member

interesting timing

I had just been noticing WhatsApp traffic passing through Facebook's servers, while packet watching my company's data. Some traffic, that IMO, should not be related to Facebook's servers, despite the acquisition.

It was nice while it lasted, I suppose...

Kiktrix
join:2017-09-22
Colorado Springs, CO
Ubiquiti UniFi AP-PRO
Ubiquiti Unifi Security Gateway Pro

6 recommendations

Kiktrix

Member

Derp

How did he not see this coming? It's Facebook we are talking about here and their business model is to data mine any and all of their services/users for the advertisers. I thought the end to end encryption was cool but there's also alternatives that aren't owned by data mining companies like Telegram.