Private Conversations

Over the last 20 years, people have adapted to conversing online. You can send messages to anybody anywhere and anytime, and they in turn can message back in real time or when they are free. With the Covid-19 outbreak this has become even more common. Distributed families in even in the same cities haven't seen each other for months, and instead use web and mobile applications to keep in touch.

There has been one aspect that has been continuously evolving - security. Initially the internet was designed as an open protocol, made more for sharing and referencing information, rather than locking it down. However as people's digital signature became larger and they share more details about themselves, the aspect of control has been evolving. Some of the early internet companies (yes I'm considering you - Google and Facebook) based their entire business model on ads with the exploitation of individual data, thus distorting the ethical fabric of the internet. As I wrote in a previous blog 7 years ago, any centralised accumulation of user data becomes a target for other agencies, mostly unethical. 

Notably, companies like Apple have realised this and pivoted towards enabling individual control of their data. It probably helps that their business model does not depend on selling your data. There are many aspects to modern tech usage that need to be re-engineered towards a more private and secure model. 

In the end, if you were to whisper something into someone's ear, you don't intend that to be available openly on the internet - forever. Digital reputations are something not easily reset.

What brings me back to this topic, is a WhatsApp application terms-of-reference update that stipulates that users are now required to share their data with the parent company Facebook. If one has been following Facebook over the years, then one can see they originate from a hacker mentality and culture - "better to seek forgiveness later, than ask permission". Thus their aim has been to exploit all data at their disposal to advance themselves competitively and financially, at the expense of a moral compass. It is funny to see former employees of Facebook, now becoming older, coming out and being apologetic and advising caution in using Facebook. On the other hand online users have been happy to give away their privacy in exchange for ease of use and dopamine driven programming. 

Starting in Feb, WhatsApp will begin sharing all kinds of data with Facebook. They just killed their best feature - privacy.

Please no longer text me on WhatsApp. Download @signalapp

— Chamath Palihapitiya (@chamath) January 10, 2021

WhatsApp's founders intended for it to be an ad-free completely privacy-driven messaging service. Most of us in Information Tech sector knew that was over once Facebook bought WhatsApp. Somehow WhatsApp's founders fooled themselves that their original intentions for the application would be maintained. I'm sure the enormous pay-out they received helped cement the illusion.

In my globally distributed family, we have been big users of WhatsApp, but now I'm advocating for everyone to shift to something else. It can be hard to do. Not everyone is tech-savvy, and once they have overcome the learning curve of one application, most are reluctant to switch.

There are more evolved privacy-conscious messenger candidates out there. The one I'm switching to at the moment and advocating is Signal. It cannot be purchased by another big player. It is secure, open-source, and end-to-end encrypted. It is also endorsed by most of the smart players - Edward Snowden, Jack Dorsey, Elon Musk among others. A more detailed look is provided in the following video:

Here's how to set it up on Android:

And how to set it up on Apple:

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Avoid getting repackaged as a social product

Both Facebook and Google+ are competing to use your inputs on their social platforms for endorsing their ads (see article). They provide you with a free service and then use you to sell stuff.

Fortunately, there are mechanisms to opt out, which for most will not be enabled by default.

To opt out of appearing in Google+ Ads

1. Go to https://plus.google.com/settings/endorsements
2. Un-tick the checkbox that says "Based upon my activity, Google may show my name and profile photo in shared endorsements that appear in ads."
3. Click 'Save'

To opt out of appearing in Facebook Ads

1. Go to https://www.facebook.com/settings?tab=ads
2. click the 'Edit' link for 'Ads and Friends'
3. under 'Pair my social actions with ads for', choose 'No one'
4. Click 'Save Changes'

You as a product

Revelations of the emergence of the 'surveillance state' in the US has deeply disturbed many who have been in denial about what massive accumulation of private individual data allows. Even though the private corporations may profess no nefarious intentions, the very fact that they have this data leads to temptations, targeting and inevitable opportunities of misuse. Facebook recently suffered a leak of 6 million private emails and phone numbers. These have surely been recorded by someone and will be used as targets for spammers, or as stolen shell identities to send out spam. The phones will get targeted with international spam calls offering cheap services and holidays. If the social graph (list of contacts) has been obtained then its even worse, as emails will go out to all friends of the stolen identity containing alarming, embarrassing, and unwanted messages.

Online ('cloud') service providers, such as Google, Apple etc. do not want you to be anonymous or even pseudonymous. They want to have the power of attorney over you complete true digital identities. At this year's WWDC, Apple was very happy to publicly declare that it has 575 million paying accounts, most of which have stored Credit Card details. YouTube has been constantly sending out requests to have users change their online public chosen names replaced with their true First - Last names.

A problem is that this identity especially when connected out to other services including ecommerce, becomes a massive target. IT Technology is not absolute - as long as information can be accessed by one person, then the mechanisms meant to keep another out will inevitably be overcome. Weaknesses will be technological as well as human. There are many existing and emerging programs of national surveillance and industrial espionage out there. If one is holding a guarded fort of valuable digital information, one should not wonder if it will be breached but when.

In the Chris Nolan's The Dark Knight (2008), the scene that keeps coming back to me most is when Morgan Freeman's character is mortified, when Batman asks him to use a new surveillance technology over their own company's mobile network to spy on the whole city simultaneously and locate the criminal targets. Freeman suitably calls it 'unethical ... too much power for one man' and agrees only after Batman agrees to destroy the machine at the end of mission. How likely do you think that such a tool, once constructed, would be dismantled in real life? 

The following is a very information packed diagram from Baynote, about where all the privacy data is coming from and going to, in some of the popular online presences.

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On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog ... till today