Tag Archives: Privacy

X Is Making Likes Private For Everyone

X, ,

Thanks to X showing what its users “like” on its platform, politicians and public personalities have been caught looking at salacious and unsavory tweets in the past. Now, the platform formerly known as Twitter is making likes mostly private, and according to company chief Elon Musk, it’s an important change so that people can “like posts without getting attacked for doing so.” Engadget reported.

The company originally launched the ability to hide the likes tab as a perk for X Premium subscribers last year. “[K]eep spicy likes private,” X said when it announced the feature.

In a new tweet, X’s Engineering account has revealed that the social network is making likes private for everyone this week. Users will no longer be able to see who liked someone else’s post, which means likes on the platform will no longer cause PR crises for public figures who like sexual, hateful, and other unpalatable posts in general.

They can still see who liked their tweets, however, along with their like count and other metrics for their own posts.

NBC News reported X is now hiding what posts users like from other users. The news rolled out in a post Wednesday morning from Elon Musk as the site update was being rolled out.

“Important change: your likes are now private,” Musk said, quoting an explanation posted by the company’s engineering account on Tuesday.

According to the post, users will still be able to see which posts they have liked themselves, and who liked their own posts, but not who liked someone else’s posts.

On Wednesday, the tab on most users’ profiles showing what posts they had liked had disappeared.

According to NBC News, Haofei Wang, X’s director of engineering, had teased the update in a post on May 21.
“Public likes are incentivizing the wrong behavior,” Wang wrote. “For example, many people feel discouraged from liking content that might be ‘edgy’ in fear of retaliation from trolls, or to protect their public image. Soon, you’ll be able to like without worrying who might see it.”

He added that if users now more freely like posts they’re interested in, X’s algorithm will become more tailored to them.

The Verge reported X is rolling out private likes as soon as today, according to a source at the company. That means what users like on the platform will be hidden by default, which is already an option for X’s Premium subscribers. Following the publication of this story, X owner Elon Musk reshared a screenshot of it, saying it’s “important to allow people to like posts without getting attacked for doing so!”

According to The Verge, late last year, Musk told the platform’s engineers that he wanted to get rid of the tweet action buttons altogether and instead place a stronger emphasis on post views (also called “impressions”). Musk’s goal was to remove the section that contained the like and repost buttons entirely because Musk believed likes weren’t important.

In my opinion, it is possible that by removing the ability to publicly “like” someone else’s post on X might make the platform easier to navigate. That said, the platform itself is going to still know what you chose to “like”.

Signal Rolls Out Usernames To Enhance User’s Privacy

Privacy,

For nearly a decade, cybersecurity professionals and privacy advocates have recommended the end-to-end encrypted communication’s app Signal as the gold standard for truly private digital communications. Using it however, has paradoxically required exposing one particular piece of private information to everyone you text or call: a phone number. Now, that’s changing, WIRED reported.

Today, Signal launched the rollout in beta of a long-awaited set of features it’s describing simply as “phone number privacy”. Those features, which WIRED has tested, are designed to allow users to communicate on the app and instead share a username as a less-sensitive method of connecting with one another.

Signal posted the following on their website:

Signal’s mission and sole focus is private communication. For years, Signal has kept your messages private, your profile information (like your name and profile photo) private, your contacts private, and your groups private — among much else. Now, we’re taking that one step further by making your phone number on Signal more private.

New default: Your phone number will no longer be visible to everyone in Signal

If you use Signal, your phone number will no longer be visible to everyone you chat with by default. People who have your number saved in their phone’s contacts will still see your phone number since they already know it.

Connect without sharing your phone number

If you don’t want to hand out your phone number to chat with someone on Signal, you can now create a unique username that you can use instead (you will still need a phone number to sign in for Signal). Note that a username is not the profile name that’s displayed in chats, it’s not a permanent handle, and not visible to the people you are chatting with in Signal. A username is simply a way to initiate contact on Signal without sharing your phone number.

Control who can find you on Signal by phone number

If you don’t want people to be able to find you by searching for your phone number on Signal, you can now enable a new, optional privacy setting. This means that unless people have your exact unique username, they won’t be able to start a conversation, or even know that you have a Signal account — even if they have your phone number.

Right now, these options are in beta, and will be rolling out to everyone in the coming weeks.

The Verge reported that if you do decide to create a username, it won’t appear on your profile details page or in your chats. Other users won’t be able to see it unless you share it. “Put another way someone will need to know your exact unique username in order to start a chat with you on Signal,” Randall Sarafa, the chief product officer at Signal, writes in a post announcing the features rollout.

In my opinion, privacy is very important for users of any social media website. Lack of privacy on any social media site can cause chaos and potential harm.

WhatsApp Announces Chat Lock

Meta, ,

WhatsApp posted on its blog “Chat Lock” Making your most intimate conversations even more private”. The purpose of this new feature appears to give users a more secure way to protect their intimate conversations behind one more layer of security. From the blog post:

Our passion is to find new ways to help keep your messages private and secure. Today, we’re excited to bring to you a new feature we’re calling Chat Lock, which lets you protect your most intimate conversations behind one more layer of security,

Locking a chat takes that thread out of the inbox and puts it behind its own folder that can only be accessed with your device password or biometric, like a fingerprint. It also automatically hides the content of that chat in notifications, too.

We think this feature will be great for people who have reason to share their phones from time to time with a family member of those moments where someone else is holding your phone at the exact moment an extra special chat arrives.You can lock a chat by tapping the name of a one-to-one or group and selecting the lock option. To reveal these chats, slowly pull down on your inbox and enter your phone password or biometric.

Over the next few months, we’re going to be adding more options for Chat Lock, including locking for companion devices and creating a custom password for your chats so that you can use a unique password different from the one you use for your phone.

Engadget reported that Chat Lock should allow users to keep certain conversations more private. The tool lets you lock any conversation, which it places in a specialized folder that is only accessible via biometrics, like a fingerprint or a face scan, or by entering a current password.

According to Engadget, WhatsApp says they’re busy prepping for more features for Chat Lock, like the ability to create a custom password for each chat and a tool to lock chats across multiple devices. Parent company Meta has been extraordinarily busy trying to keep WhatsApp safe and reliable, as it recently beefed up the verification system to hinder would-be scammers and added more options to deal with disappearing messages.

iPhone in Canada reported that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented on Chat Lock, saying “New locked chats in WhatsApp make your conversations more private. They’re hidden in a password protected folder and notifications won’t show sender or message content.”

Chat Lock brings further privacy to conversations and is something iMessage should integrate at some point as well. There’s nothing worse than seeing some embarrassing notifications pop up from your group chats that aren’t silenced, iPhone in Canada reported. On iPhone, it is possible to lock down the opening of WhatsApp with Face ID or Touch ID, but that doesn’t stop or hide notifications from chats.

iPhone in Canada also reported: We’re not seeing WhatsApp Chat Lock in Canada yet, but if you are, let us know.

To me, it makes sense for WhatsApp to provide the kind of privacy that should be enabled for private, personal chats. This new feature makes WhatsApp one of the most secure apps for people who want to have personal chats with someone special.

Tech Companies Urge Congress to Protect Search and Browsing Data

Privacy,

Several tech companies are asking the U.S. House of Representatives to pass legislation that would prevent the FBI from obtaining people’s browser history without a warrant. The tech companies include: Mozilla, Reddit, Twitter, and Patreon.

Mozilla Corporation, Engine, Reddit, Inc., Reform Government Surveillance, Twitter, i2Coalition, and Patreon sent a letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Chairman of the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary Jerry Nadler, and Ranking Member of the U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary. From the letter:

We urge you to explicitly prohibit the warrantless collection of internet search and browsing history when you consider the USA FREEDOM Reauthorization Act (H.R. 6172) next week. As leading internet businesses and organizations, we believe privacy and security are essential to our economy our businesses, and the continued growth of the free and open internet. By clearly reaffirming these protections, Congress can help preserve user trust and facilitate the continued use of the internet as a powerful contributing force for our recovery.

This comes after the U.S. Senate voted down an amendment to the USA Patriot Act that would create a tougher standard for government investigators to collect web search and browsing histories of people in the states.

It was a bipartisan amendment that would have required the Department of Justice to show probable cause when requesting approval from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to collect the data for counterterrorism or counterintelligence investigations.

Apple Explains Why Newer iPhones Share Location Data

Apple,

There’s something strange going on with the iPhone 11 Pro. Security reporter Brian Krebs noticed that the iPhone 11 Pro intermittently seeks the user’s location information even when all applications and system services on the phone are individually set to never request this data.

On Nov. 13, KrebsOnSecurity contacted Apple to report this as a possible privacy bug in the new iPhone Pro and/or in iOS 13.x, sharing a video showing how the device still seeks the user’s location when each app and system service is set to “never” request location information (but with the main Location Data service still turned on).

You can watch that video on the KrebsOnSecurity website. The first response from Apple came from an Apple engineer that described what was happening as “expected behavior”. The engineer stated: “It is expected behavior that the Location Services icon appears in the status bar when Location Services is enabled. The icon appears for system services that do not have a switch in Settings.”

Personally, I think that’s really creepy. Brian Krebs rightfully pointed out that what is happening seems to contradict Apple’s recent commercials, which emphasize that Apple respects users privacy. I find it troubling that some of the newest Apple phones have been collecting location data without the user’s permission or knowledge. I also wonder why Apple failed to turn off something that they clearly were aware of. It feels sneaky.

Later, Apple provided more information to KrebsOnSecurity. The short version is that the behavior (which I think of as location tracking) is connected to a “new short-range technology that lets iPhone 11 users share files locally with other nearby phones that support this feature.” Apple said a future version of its mobile operating system will allow users to disable it. You can read more about this on KrebsOnSecurity.

Facebook Portal Will Spy On You After All

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As reported by Recode, and with a small dose of “Told you so“, Facebook has clarified that it will spy on you using its new Portal devices after all.

In an email sent to Recode, Facebook said, “Portal voice calling is built on the Messenger infrastructure, so when you make a video call on Portal, we collect the same types of information (i.e. usage data such as length of calls, frequency of calls) that we collect on other Messenger-enabled devices. We may use this information to inform the ads we show you across our platforms. Other general usage data, such as aggregate usage of apps, etc., may also feed into the information that we use to serve ads.”

I don’t have to put up with this kind of privacy abuse when I use my landline or my smartphone to make a voice call. Why should it be acceptable at all just because it’s a video call?

Imagine I phoned a retailer using their toll-free number and then I was phoned a few days later by a competitor, perhaps offering a discount. The phone company had sold my phone number to the competitor on the basis of the original call. Now, I’m fairly sure that would be flat out illegal in most countries – I’m not a lawyer but I’m pretty sure in Europe the GDPR regulations would stop that – but here we are with Facebook potentially showing us ads on the basis of who we talk to. This is just wrong, wrong, wrong.

I am increasingly of the opinion that these social media giants need regulation to ensure our rights are maintained. Keeping private both conversations, and the data about conversations, would be a very good place to start.

Shhh! It’s a Secret!

Privacy, Security, ,

Shhh!The past few weeks have seen most of the tech industry line up against law enforcement and intelligence agencies over the matter of encryption and privacy. I particularly liked Google’s recent conversion to privacy as it wasn’t that long ago that Eric Schmidt, Google CEO, said that, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Moving on, there’s been a great deal of emphasis on the privacy aspect, but few have noted that encryption is mainly about secrecy, and that privacy and secrecy are not the same thing. If you do think that privacy and secrecy are the same thing, consider this, “It’s no secret that you go to the restroom, but it’s something you do in private.” I can’t claim credit for this – Bruce Schneier was discussing this over ten years ago and I thoroughly recommend you read some of his recent posts on the matters too.

You might also like to think of it this way; a private home v. secret hide-out. The former is in plain sight but restricted to the owner and his guests, whereas the latter is hidden and known only to a select few.

With a better understanding of the difference between privacy and security, a more reasoned debate can take place, which needs to be agnostic of the technology, to decide the rights of the individuals and the responsibilities of law enforcement.

Ask yourself some questions, “Should what person X does (on their phone) be private?” and “Should what person X does (on their phone) be secret?”. Remember, person X might be you, your family, your friends, your colleagues; person X might be suspects, criminals, murderers, terrorists, paedophiles; person X might be freedom fighters, democracy activitists, oppressed women, abused spouses, LGBT members. You get the picture, person X might be someone you approve of, or they might be someone you don’t like.

The easy answer is to say that person X should have privacy but not secrecy. Does this guard against wholesale monitoring of communication by intelligence agencies? Snowden has shown that this happened and I think most people would see this as an overreach of their authority with no legal oversight. But once person X has come to the attention of the authorities, does that strip away any right to privacy? What level of suspicion is needed, what evidence is required, what is the process of law? None of these have easy answers.

Undoubtedly this is a complex affair with hyperbole, thin-end-of-wedge-ism, and freedom protestors in dictatorships by the bucket load. For certain, we need to move this away from the technology and into human, societal and legal rights. Nothing is black and white, but this is about the future and the world we want to live in. Personally, I firmly believe in privacy, but I’m not so sure about secrecy. I use encryption on my phone as reassurance that should I lose my phone, important data won’t be misused by the finder. Generally I feel that wrong-doers, alleged or otherwise, shouldn’t have secrets, but I’m always concerned about the abuse of power. As always, “Who watches the watchers?”

(The other curious thing to consider is regarding dead people. Generally, they don’t have the same legal rights as living people. What would this mean?)