Privacy, Security & Algorithms
A PSA about PSAs
One of the most important things to us at TSN and to me personally is the privacy and security of digital info. Our documents and contacts, or the more personal data like pictures and videos.
Facebook has been strategically purchasing social media companies for the last decade. The two most substantial were Instagram for $1 billion and WhatsApp for $19 billion. After May 15, 2021, WhatsApp will no longer be the secure alternative messaging platform we have enjoyed since 2009. I’d like to break down what is happening and offer other solutions to secure communications.
This will be a 10 minute read, but it is worth it, so strap in!
What does this mean for us consumers?
Tech companies aim to make our lives "easier" by streamlining the usage of their products or services in to a single package. They do so by disguising it as a "convenience". The most important issue with this is your the privacy and security of your personal info. These companies harvest and sell your info to ad agencies for unfathomable amounts of money. In 2020, US companies spent between $250 and $300 BILLION on marketing and advertising. To put it in perspective - global ad spend was just over $600 billion. US companies spent almost half of that.
The crazy part: gaining access to your personal info was the primary reason for these companies spending that much in 2020.
What is classified as 'personal info'?
There are the basics: name, phone number, email address, maybe home address too. Then there are the things we either don't know about or don't think about. This can be summarized as your digital fingerprint (or in some places referred to as digital footprint, but it's the same thing).
What is a digital fingerprint?
You know that iPhone case you bought on Amazon, or that cute sweater you got online from Target? That is the kind of info that Facebook harvests and sells to companies like Amazon and Target. So, next time you open Facebook on your phone you see Amazon adds for a car phone holder or a charging cable, or maybe a pair of pants to go with your new sweater from Target. But it doesn't stop there!
Let's say you remodeled your kitchen and posted pics on Instagram (not Facebook). You open up Facebook and see ads for cookware or kitchen appliances.
So what? I like the ads. They help me shop.
Facebook sells the same info about you to everyone. You will start seeing ads for eStores you have never heard of. The issue with this is: they are making money off of you, and you do all the work for them.
But it's not just the ads. It’s their algorithms. An algorithm is used to learn and compute something based off of an input. Here’s an example: you watch The Last Dance on Netflix. So, your input was The Last Dance, and it learned that you like basketball documentaries. So, it will recommend other basketball shows or sports shows.
Back to Facebook. They use this info along with the other info you put in your profile (like your hometown, hobbies, university, etc.) to show you the info they want you to see. If you ‘like’ post about headphones, you'll see ads for the latest Bose products. If you 'like' a picture of a coffee shop, you'll see ads for coffee bean subscriptions. These companies purchase ad space on Facebook in hopes that you will tap or click the link to their page and buy their product.
What does this have to do with WhatsApp?
WhatsApp was founded by a couple of guys who designed it to be a secure communications platform where we could communicate with our friends and family all over the world in a safe, secure way. Like I mentioned above, Facebook purchased WhatsApp about 7 years ago.
If you use Facebook and Instagram, you've probably noticed that IG DMs and FB Messenger have basically merged. The ultimate plan is to include WhatsApp in this merging of the messengers, so all of the data tracking and data harvesting we’ve been talking about will be built in to WhatsApp.
Ok...so what does this mean?
This completely strips the security of WhatsApp and turns it into another social media platform that harvests personal info from your private conversations. Here’s a practical example: you’ll start getting TV show recommendations on Netflix because of a show you discussed with your Mom in WhatsApp.
All the cute messages from your spouse, all the pictures of your dog, and anything else you put in WhatsApp will be scanned and added to your digital fingerprint that Facebook has stored. You have zero access to your digital fingerprint. We cannot control what they harvest from us because we willingly use their free services, which makes us the product.
Now I hate Facebook. What do I do?
Firstly, it's not just Facebook; all of the social media companies do this. Facebook just happens to be the biggest.
The extreme is to nuke all of your social media, but that's not totally realistic for most people. The next best thing you can do is control how you communicate to you closest friends and family. Signal is an amazing alternative to WhatsApp that is cross-platform (that means it works on Android and iOS). In fact, the guys who created WhatsApp built it with the secure messaging protocols that Signal created.
Unfortunately, with Facebook's big plans, the security and integrity of WhatsApp will be reduced to the same level as Facebook Messenger.
I have been sufficiently scared off of the Internet. What else can I do?
The Internet isn’t all bad. It is really nice to pay my electric bill online vs. having to send a check or go to an office. Just like with anything, education is key to using a product or service correctly.
I have an iPhone. Something I do is disable background app refresh and the use of cellular data on my social media apps. This ensures these apps won't be running processes on my device when I don't have the app open, especially while not connected to wifi. Here are links on how to do this on iOS and Android.
If you want to take it a step further, delete the social media app from your phone completely and use your phone's web browser, like Safari, Chrome, or Firefox. Doing so will greatly reduce the apps’ ability to harvest personal info on from device because you haven’t granted that access, like contacts and pictures.
Conclusion
This may not sound all bad. There are lots of reasons why this cross-app tracking could be useful, especially as a small business owner who depends on social media for sales.
Edit: WhatsApp has clarified what is changing here. In my opinion, they took way too long in responding to the negative press; the damage was already done.
I don’t like when someone comes in my house uninvited, so I lock my doors. My phone is my digital house, so I’m going to lock those doors too.
Recommendations and Resources
Background app refresh iOS and Android
