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Thursday, January 28, 2021

WhatsApp's New Privacy Policy: Collecting Metadata and Its Implications

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Vaishnavi Krishna Mohan
Vaishnavi Krishna Mohan
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Vaishnavi Krishna Mohan

Article Title

WhatsApp's New Privacy Policy: Collecting Metadata and Its Implications

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Global Views 360

Publication Date

January 28, 2021

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Representative Image WhatsApp

Representative Image WhatsApp | Source: Rachit Tank via Unsplash

According to WhatsApp’s new privacy policy, the app is set to collect “only” user’s Metadata. Metadata can reveal a lot more than merely the app usage of a person. Former NSA General Counsel Stewart Baker stated, “Metadata absolutely tells you everything about somebody’s life. If you have enough metadata you don’t really need content.”

This article explores the ways in which WhatsApp is underselling the true estimation of the significance of Metadata.

Facebook owned WhatsApp recently announced the update of its privacy policy terms. 8th of February, 2021 was initially set as the deadline for users to either accept the new privacy policy or delete their account. By this time, most of us have already witnessed or been a part of the backlash that WhatsApp is experiencing. LocalCircles conducted a survey and the results indicated that 15% of India’s users are likely to move away entirely from the app while 36% will drastically reduce the usage and 67% of users are likely to discontinue chats with WhatsApp business accounts.

To reinstall trust in its users, WhatsApp released a clarification stating that the new policy update doesn’t compromise privacy of messages with friends and family. Furthermore, it explains that the update includes changes related to WhatsApp business accounts are optional too.

However, owing to severe backlash, WhatsApp has pushed the deadline to May 15 while they further clarify their policy updates.

It is true that WhatsApp cannot read our messages as it is end-to-end encrypted which implies that only a message’s sender and receiver can read it. The updated privacy policy intends to alert users that some businesses would soon be using Facebook-servers to store messages with their customers. By accepting the new privacy policy, users will be allowing WhatsApp to reserve all rights to collect your data and share it with the expansive Facebook and Instagram networks ‘regardless of whether you have profiles on those apps.’

A person using WhatsApp | Source: Andrés Rodríguez via Pixabay

By using WhatsApp, you may now be sharing your usage data, your phone’s unique identifier, your location when the location service is enabled, among several other types of metadata. A culmination of all your metadata is linked to your identity.

The value of metadata has been underestimated since the term isn’t clearly understood. Metadata is data about our data. For instance, in a cell phone conversation, the conversation itself isn’t metadata but everything except that is metadata. Data regarding who you called, how long you spoke for, where you were when you placed the call, where the other person on the line was and the time you placed the call. Consider a situation when every time you made a call to someone, you had to inform a particular person about who you called, how long you spoke for, when and where and all other details except the content spoken. This applies for every single call and everyone else’s metadata is also being recorded. The person owning the metadata can analyze and tell a lot about your personal life. Who you work with, who you spend time with, who you are close to, where you are at particular times and so on…

Kurt Opsahl, in his post in the Electronic Frontier Foundation, gives an example of how companies and governments collect intimate details about your life with the disguised use of the word called metadata. The following examples are an excerpt of his article:

“They know you rang a phone sex service at 2:24 am and spoke for 18 minutes. They know that you called suicide prevention hotline from the Golden Gate Bridge.

They know you spoke with an HIV testing service, then your doctor, then your health insurance company in the same hour.

They know you called a gynaecologist, spoke for a half hour, and then called the local Planned Parenthood's number later that day. But nobody knows what you spoke about.”

Metadata provides more than required context to know some of the most intimate and personal details of your lives.  When this data is correlated with the records of other phone calls, one can easily obtain a lot more data and track our daily routines. This is merely about phone calls. WhatsApp includes a lot more features and will collect metadata of chats, businesses and money transactions.

In WhatsApp’s words:

“We collect service-related, diagnostic, and performance information. This includes information about your activity (such as how you use our Services, how you interact with others using our Services, and the like), log files, and diagnostic, crash, website, and performance logs and reports.”

In addition to this, WhatsApp also collects information about IP address, OS, browser information and phone number.

Stanford’s computer scientists conducted an analysis to understand the extent of intrusion of privacy using metadata. The scientists built an app for smartphones. The app was developed to retrieve metadata of calls and text messages from more than 800 volunteers’ phone logs. The researchers received records of more than 250,000 calls and 1.2 million texts. Their inexpensive analysis revealed personal details of several people like their health records. Researchers were also able to learn that one of their participants owned an AR semi-automatic rifle with only metadata.

Gen. Michael Hayden | Source: Wikimedia

Gen. Michael Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency once stated that “the U.S. government kill[s] people based on metadata.”

In 2016, Facebook was involved in the infamous data privacy scandal which centered around collection of personal data of over 87 million people by Cambridge Analytica, a political consulting and strategic analyst firm. The organization harvested user data for targeted advertising, particularly political advertising during the 2016 U.S. election. While the central offender was Cambridge Analytica, the apparent indifference for data privacy to Facebook facilitated Cambridge Analytical and several other organizations.

In June 2018, Facebook confirmed that it was sharing data with at least 4 Chinese companies, Huawei, Oppo, Lenovo and TCL. Facebook was under scrutiny from the U.S. intelligence agencies on security issues as they claimed that the data with the Chinese telecommunication companies would provide an opportunity for a foreign espionage.

In September 2019, there were reports that the Indian government contemplated making it mandatory for companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, to share the public data of users.

The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) was planning on issuing new guidelines under the Information Technology Act which according to which tech giants would have been required to share freely available data or the public information that they collate in the course of their operations, including traffic, buying and illness patterns.

Europe is exempted from WhatsApp’s new privacy policy as EU antitrust authorities fined Facebook 110 million euros for misleading the regulators during the takeover of WhatsApp in 2014. EU’s strict privacy laws empowers regulators to fine up to 4% of global annual revenue of the companies that breach the bloc’s rules.

Your Metadata is extremely personal. By giving WhatsApp the authority to access it, you are giving access to several other organizations, businesses and it also makes you more vulnerable to third-party hackers and trackers. WhatsApp has given multiple assurances about its updated privacy policy being noninvasive. However, most of these assurances are cleverly worded and misleading statements. It is important to read through the fine print of the new policy before accepting it.

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February 4, 2021 4:50 PM

Has Hollywood finally decided to fight “Reel Life Racism”

Back in the 1960s, when the Civil Rights Movement was slowly gaining momentum in the United States, broadcasting services were employed to gather support for the movement. Images of various kinds of atrocities and violence being rendered to nonviolent Black demonstrators were broadcasted into American houses to raise awareness about the movement.

However, the response of Hollywood so far can be explained in a single word- tragic! Hollywood as a major media and content producer has massively shaped the American culture. However it has not much to show as a positive influence on race issues.

A classic 1940’s musical movie, Holiday Inn had the famous song in which White stars performed in blackface. In a 1980s hit, “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” the Indians are depicted as barbaric and uncivilised. The list of such racial stereotypes is huge to be reproduced here.

Legendary Hollywood actor John Wayne made highly offensive comments in a playboy interview. His exact words are, “I believe in white supremacy until the Blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don't believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people.” He further goes on to make a series of comments, that ideally should not be coming from someone with so much influence in Hollywood.

Many legendary actors and industry icons too have struggled due to racism in Hollywood. Bruce Lee is a fine example of a person who fought against racism in the industry and refused to be cast in many roles that portrayed Chinese people in a negative light. He ultimately moved back to Hong Kong, partly due to the lack of appropriate roles. Actress Lucy Liu has also spoken about how she was too naïve to understand back in the early days as to why her friend would get multiple auditions every day, while she managed two or three in a month.

In 2015, there was a massive uproar regarding the Oscar winners after the academy awarded all 20 nominations to white actors. It quickly gained momentum with the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite becoming a global trend. Before #OscarsSoWhite, no one would have bothered to notice that 86% of top films predominantly featured white actors.

As per a Washington Post survey, film directors who ranked as the most influential decision-makers at Hollywood were predominantly whites. Hollywood might stress for newer reforms against racism on the big screen but that is not the reality at all. To put things into perspective, the Hollywood academy has never revealed information about the diversity of its members involved in the branches of the academy, such as writers, directors, etc.

The response of Hollywood movers and shakers was always akin to a tokenism, a call to push for producing more content involving black writers, producers, and actors.

George Floyd’s death was just the trigger it needed to burst out in the open the pent up anger over the centuries of discrimination, oppression, and systematic injustice meted out to black people. The way black people are portrayed in reel life directly impacts society’s attitude towards them in real life.

People started demanding that Hollywood production companies and studios should involve the people from the community in the decision-making process when the movie plot is based considerably on the members of those communities. They have also demanded that older movies depicting racially insensitive narratives should be taken out of circulation.

Disney, one of the most reputed names in Hollywood, chose to remove the movie “Song of the South” from US distribution, when the criticism for the movie grew, even though it remains available for those who know where to look. They have also announced the plan to revamp the famous Splash Mountain ride at Disneyland and Disney World to include the character of Princess Tiana- Disney’s first African American princess from the movie The Princess and the Frog.

UK TV broadcaster Sky has added a disclaimer to approximately a dozen films stating, “This film has outdated attitudes, language and cultural depictions which may cause offence today."

HBO max recently pulled the iconic film, Gone with the wind because of its controversial depiction of black stereotypes. It returned with a four and a half minute introductory video by black scholar Jaqueline Stewart for a better understanding about racism.

Ever since the resurfacing of the playboy interview of John Wayne, students and alumni at USC have been protesting against Wayne’s exhibit at the campus. However, USC has finally decided to remove the exhibit.

All these reforms are a direct result of the audience being more and more aware of racism and prejudice. However, it is Hollywood’s turn to step up and push for bigger reforms. While it would be a challenging and bold endeavor, Hollywood’s global influence makes it imperative for the industry to undergo much-needed reforms.

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