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THE DATA PROTECTION Commission has said it is seeking a meeting with Facebook, after reports it was planning to merge its messaging services on Whatsapp, Messenger and Instagram.
It said that previous proposals to share data across companies owned by Facebook had caused significant data protection concerns and any merger of these services would have to be compliant with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
The New York Times reported last week that the tech giant planned to integrate its various messaging services.
“We’re working on making more of our messaging products end-to-end encrypted and considering ways to make it easier to reach friends and family across networks,” a Facebook spokeswoman said.
“As you would expect, there is a lot of discussion and debate as we begin the long process of figuring out all the details of how this will work.”
Facebook hopes to get the messaging apps communicating with one another, while remaining separate services, by the end of this year or early next year, according to the New York Times report.
The Data Protection Commission in Ireland, however, has said it requires an “urgent briefing on what is being proposed”.
It said in a statement: “The Irish DPC will be very closely scrutinising Facebook’s plans as they develop, particularly insofar as they involve the sharing and merging of personal data between different Facebook companies.
Previous proposals to share data between Facebook companies have given rise to significant data protection concerns and the Irish DPC will be seeking early assurances that all such concerns will be fully taken into account by Facebook in further developing this proposal.
“It must be emphasised that ultimately the proposed integration can only occur in the EU if it is capable of meeting all of the requirements of the GDPR.”
With reporting from AFP
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WhatsApp have my phone number, Facebook does not – I don’t want my phone number linked to my FB profile
@Gordon Walsh: your journal account is linked to your FB . I can see you
@Gordon Walsh: WhatsApp is online, facebook is online, Instagram is online. Once anything is on line treat it as hanging it out on the washing line. There’s no such thing as private if it’s hackable, which everything seems to be
@Gordon Walsh: I’ll be deleting WhatsApp if that happens
@Scorpionvenomm: use Telegram
@Gordon Walsh: whatsapp have your phone number, Facebook own WhatsApp, Facebook have your phone number.
As well as 10,000+ data analytic companies…
@Gordon Walsh: Facebook know everything about you and so do countless companies. You are a file
@Toby Fish: So what? If you have nothing to hide what’t the problem.You may get a few more annoying adds when reading an article ,so download an add blocker.
@Alex Reed: Yep, and sells data to 10,000+
@Billy McNamara: if you have nothing to say why worry about the right to free speech. Is that your thinking also?
@Billy McNamara: who knows how far the invasion of our privacy will go and the affects it will have on us.
The kinda threesome that is going float nobody’s
Boat
@BaaB: why not? What details of the integration do we know so far?
Facebook have a bigger economy than many countries (including Ireland). I doubt they will worry about a tiny entity like the Irish Data Protection Commission.
@Shakka1244: but the Irish DPC is their point of contact for all data protection issues in the EU so they might just worry a small bit
@Fear Uisce: no not in the slightest, so hawk in our gov will get the brown envelope and all will be right with the world again , Blackfoot business in Ireland as usual, nothing to see here move along
@Shakka1244: IDPA makes the rules for the rest of Europe which other countries follow closely.
Surely that’s an anti trust case in the making. Remember when Microsoft got stung for multiple millions for bundling their software and prioritising it over others on their operating platforms. This on the surface appears similar.
@Raymond Dennehy: Microsoft got done for abusing it’s position in the market. It’s practices were anti competition. This is one company merging three of it services into one. There is nothing anti competitive about that. They are in no way preventing competing messenger systems from operating in the environment of the internet
@Darren Byrne: thos is more than a simple vertical integration of companies under one umbrella; it is extending an already existing monopoly on social media service provision.
By a company know to breach data privacy regulations…
Not happy with listening to you through your phone Mic, now they want more data. We are giving more of us away than most people realise.
@the druid: no tinfoil at all. This has already been admitted. These services maintain continued access to your mic and record everything you say. They have to in order to “wake up” to certain keywords to activate a service. Alexa is a good example of this. Now, employees can’t access these recordings (so we’re told), and they are supposedly disposed of shortly after being recorded if they are of no relevance, but, without them, services such as Google Assistant or Alexa would be physically impossible.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: just uninstall FB and google app from the phone all sorted.
@Peter Hughes: you can’t uninstall Google from your phone. It’s an integral part of Android. You can uninstall Facebook on most devices, but not all. Some phones will only let you disable it, but not uninstall it. Any app that requires access to your microphone can record your conversations, even if you’re not actively using the app in question. Whether or not they are actively recording is another matter. Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, the Samsung UI, Sony UI, Huawei UI, amongst others, all record your conversations. I don’t know anything about Apple products, so all I can say for them is that in order for Apple’s voice assistant (Siri) to work, it too must record your conversations.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: ahhh cry me a river pal, who cares, seriously
@the druid: starting with a tinfoil hat as your default position, to be proven wrong is not a bad approach. Rather that than making paper planes of my bank statements and firing them all round O’Connell Street.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: youre wrong there buddy with the Alexa example. Devices such as that use a ‘buffer’. They dont listen/record all the time. They are loaded with four separate algorithms, each trained to listen for one of the wake words. Once you set a wake word, that specific algorithm is activated, meaning your device can truly only understand one word. Only when the ring of lights around the top of an Alexa device, for example, is illuminated is the device recording and sending the audio to servers.
@Jack Luther: which means they are recording. They’re just deleting as they go and only forwarding recorded information on to servers once the wake word has been activated. I’m not into these conspiracy theories about people on the other end monitoring you. It’s just some form of continuous recording must occur in order for it to work. And, as I already said, what happens after the recording of any word (which could even be a split second after the recording of a word is made) is dependent on the service provider. How would a wake word work if there was no recording? By the time you finished the word, the start of the word would already have been forgotten. It’s just how these things work.
@Stephen C: some people care. Personally, it doesn’t bother me. They’ll only hear me cooking, cleaning, carving wood or watching TV.
@Brian Ó Dálaigh: lad the information is out there just Google it because you obviously havent. Youve literally ignored what i just said. “Some form of continuous recording…” “its juat how these things work” No. Just no. Do yourself a favour and gain some knowledge on it before forming opinions like that because you sound like a tinfoil-hat-man, even though you claim the opposite. Bet you’re one of these people that share those statuses on FB saying “i dont consent to my data being taken or saved etc.” Juat by registering you’ve given them all the consent they need to do what they want.
@Jack Luther: No, I don’t share those statuses as they are horse manure. As for Alexa or any other voice assistant, you’re completely wrong. They do record. In single second snippets. If the information does not match any saved wake words, that information is then discarded and recorded over with the next voice frame. This information is not sent remotely or over any network. Only information recorded after the wake word is sent across a network in the same way that cookies and other browser information is sent. You say I’m wrong, but Google and Amazon have literally said what I have. There is no conspiracy in it. It literally is a computing requirement in much the same way a processor records a keystroke in order to process and display it.
@Jack Luther: From Geoffrey A. Fowler, tech columnist at The Washington Post, “Amazon’s Echo uses seven microphones and noise-canceling tech to listen out for its wake word. Doing so, it records about a second of ambient sound on the device, which it constantly discards and replaces. But once it thinks it hears its wake word, the Echo’s blue light ring activates and it begins sending a recording of what it hears to Amazon’s computers.” Read the second sentence carefully. Then we have: https://www.wired.com/2016/12/alexa-and-google-record-your-voice/
More people’s personal data to sell to commercial interests. The data watchdog would want to wake up this week got messages from SuperValu Lidl and Aldi asking for my phone number to win a week’s groceries worth €250. Doing that subscribes to text messages from Singapore €2 a message . Watchdog my ass
@DavidOReilly: you do know that they’re not really from suoervalu lidl and aldi?
@DavidOReilly: it’ll be back to the days of using text message I think all platforms no too much about ppl as is
@Darcy: I do but the data watchdog incharge of securing your data does not seem to know or care.
Talk about closing the gate after the horse has bolted. Facebook is a company with no physical product that makes money by collecting and selling data of users. The solution would have been that the EU recognised this threat and blocked the acquisition of WhatsApp.
Both WhatsApp founders have resigned from Whatsapp/FB, Brian Acton donated USD 50M of his own wealth to the Signal foundation and this is a strong indicator of the negative impact FB is having!
Fingers crossed The Signal Foundation continues to run as an NGO and that more users adopt the platform!
“merge Whatsapp, Instagram and Messenger”
Doesnt that run the risk of making one or more of those 3 apps irrelevant…?
@Anthony Clark: I stand to be corrected on this, but my understanding is that the private messaging facilities of Messenger and Instagram combined with the messaging service of WhatsApp would be merged. Your Instagram picture service and your Facebook feed would remain two separate services. Currently, there is Instagram, Instagram Direct (messaging service), Messenger, Facebook, and WhatsApp. After the merger, there would be Facebook, Instagram and a unified messaging service. I still don’t like it, though. My Instagram and my Facebook are linked. But, I use Facebook for personal and Instagram for my wood carving. Will this mean my direct messages would show as being from me, personally, or from my carving persona?
Time to all move to telegram. FB wants everything
If Facebook and what apps merge to the extent you get annoying FB updates within whatsapp people will just switch. I can’t believe the high valuations placed on some companies when people will gladly switch at the click of a button. It’s not hard to do and there are millions of competitors waiting to pounce
Should not be done without consent.
Alternative is to close the accounts.
I think providing end to end encryption on all messaging services is a good thing. It keeps your messages private. At the moment anything you send via instagram or Facebook messenger are visible and can be requested by court order. Anything you text can be used against you and taken out of context. I think you need to ask why the dpc and government have an issue with people being able to send secure private message to each other.
It’s not April yet
Everywhere I go now I get a message to review a place the minute I physically leave it. If I buy something or use a service I get pop upsasking for reviews or selling me similar products or services. It’s getting a bit cray cray. :(
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