Ulrich Kelber has no confidence in WhatsApp. According to the data protection commissioner, the government would do well to stop using Facebook's messaging service. According to Kelber, WhatsApp collects metadata from its users and passes it on to Facebook. We should not put our privacy up for grabs, especially in these tough times. He therefore advocates a WhatsApp ban for German government departments,Ulrich Kelber tells the Düsseldorf newspaper Handelsblatt.
WhatsApp the most widely used and popular messaging service in the world. According to the latest, official figures, the chat application has more than 2 billion active users worldwide. WhatsApp allows users to send each other not only messages back and forth, but also photos, videos and other files. Video calling and meeting are also among the possibilities. All messages are also secured with end-to-end encryption, meaning that only the sender and receiver can read each other's messages.
WhatsApp made its debut on the iPhone in 2009. Then the messaging service also appeared for other operating systems such as Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerryOS and Symbian. Facebook sees WhatsApp's explosive growth and smells opportunity. In 2014, Mark Zuckerberg's company acquired the messaging service for $19 billion. Never before has a tech company put so much money on the table to acquire another company.
Immediately after the acquisition, critical voices were already being heard. Opponents feared that WhatsApp would transfer user data to Facebook, or that Facebook would fill the messaging service with advertising. To date, WhatsApp is still ad-free, although that could change overnight.
Ulrich Kelber, Germany's data protection commissioner, is uneasy about it. He fears that WhatsApp is transferring user data to Facebook on a large scale. Last weekend, he wrote a letter to several federal government agencies warning them about this. In his letter, Kelber writes, among other things, that just by sending a message, WhatsApp is collecting metadata. According to the official, it is obvious that this data is forwarded linea recta to Facebook. "With just this contribution, even if it is only a small piece of a mosaic, Facebook is better able to create user profiles," Kelber said.
When the data protection commissioner talks about metadata, he is referring to things like IP address, location data (GPS), date, time and information about your smartphone's operating system. With this data, experts can map people's movements and build a user profile. By connecting this information together, you can get a pretty good idea of a person's hobbies, financial situation, health, political preferences and so on. It is not for nothing that big data is said to be big business.
With the corona pandemic, we rely more and more on chat and video calling applications like WhatsApp. Especially in these times, Kelber says it is important that we do not take our privacy for granted. If it were up to him, there would be a ban today on German government agencies using WhatsApp. Government agencies must communicate "directly and honestly" with citizens and institutions and inform them in a "reliable" way. "If WhatsApp is used for this purpose, it shows that the data protection service has been neglected," Kelber said. Finally, he believes government services should be role models and adhere to privacy laws.
Handelsblatt asked WhatsApp for a response to the data protection commissioner's statements. A spokesperson for the company let it be known that it does not recognize itself in Kelber's criticism. "WhatsApp cannot read users' messages because they are encrypted by default," the spokesperson explained. Only people who send each other messages can read them, not even Facebook and WhatsApp.
The spokesman also denied that WhatsApp forwards metadata to Facebook "to create user profiles, improve Facebook products or advertising purposes."
According to the latest edition of the National Social Media Survey, our country has 12.1 million WhatsApp users. Cybercriminals know this all too well and abuse the platform to commit identity fraud. The criminals approach their victim and pretend to be a friend or acquaintance. When they ask a critical question about the unknown phone number, the criminals say they have a new number.
Then the criminals say they need money urgently, asking the victim to transfer it by return. What they don't know is that the money is immediately diverted to the criminals' bank account. In January, the police warned that this type of fraud is on the rise. Since the beginning of this month, it has been possible to report fraud online via WhatsApp.
