Just thoughts …

Category: TG@u3a

Some of my posts on the Cardiff u3a Thought grazing site (from 2020) are duplicated here.

  • The right way to change Ts&Cs – Google learnt it’s lesson

    It’s not long ago that Google was described as “the evil empire” because of its perceived intent on hoovering up all the data it could about us in the endeavour to “provide the best search experience for its users”. Baloney of course – they just wanted to drive the monetisation of their platform as far as they thought they could get away with, and by now you shouldn’t pay too much attention to the search results that appear at the top of a Google search – they’ve almost always been “paid-for”.

    However, out of bad publicity they learned a lesson. When changing terms and conditions of use, or service, its best to explain clearly, and in advance, what they want, and expect, to do, and invite comment. That was most certainly missing from Facebook’s recent debacle with WhatsApp. So to show how it perhaps should be done, I’me including some recent screen shots from Google over the past few months …

    A very recent change to Google services that is being proposed and communicated to users in an email. This was the first email sent …

    … which was followed up with this one, which prompted me to do something about it!!!

    Once into the application, you receive a screen like this one …

    I’ve now switched off these personalisations, but what I was doing was very clearly explained.

    Then there is this advance warning of changes to the storage policy that covers your Drive and Photos accounts. [I must do something about this as I have a number of Google accounts knocking about.]

    A clear explanation of changes to YouTube – not ones I like, but there’s no attempt to hide what they intend to do, and it provides a hint that they will apply to us later this year when Google leave Ireland for the US.

    Changes to the Google Photos policy which is causing some distress, but is explained clearly and gives you a lot of time to work out how to use the service after June 1st 2021.

    Early notice of the intended changes to Google Drive, and how files will be deleted.

    Finally, another company explains clearly how and why it’s changing it’s Terms and Conditions – not something WhatsApp did. Shame on them!

  • The new WhatsApp Terms and Conditions of Use

    Let’s start with this passage from the article in The Register referred to below where the founder of WhatsApp talks about his reasons for creating WhatsApp …

    “When WhatsApp was acquired by Facebook in 2014, it promised netizens that its instant-messaging app would not collect names, addresses, internet searches, or location data. CEO Jan Koum wrote in a blog post: “Above all else, I want to make sure you understand how deeply I value the principle of private communication. For me, this is very personal. I was born in Ukraine, and grew up in the USSR during the 1980s

    One of my strongest memories from that time is a phrase I’d frequently hear when my mother was talking on the phone: ‘This is not a phone conversation; I’ll tell you in person.’ The fact that we couldn’t speak freely without the fear that our communications would be monitored by KGB is in part why we moved to the United States when I was a teenager.”

    Two years later, however, that vow was eroded by, well, capitalism, and WhatsApp revealed it would be “coordinating more with Facebook,” and gave people the opportunity to opt out of any data sharing. This time around, there is no opt-out for the sharing of data with Facebook and its tentacles. Koum left in 2018.”

    So this all started 4 years ago, when WhatsApp announced a change to their Terms and Conditions (Ts&Cs) – the first change in many years, and the first since being taken over by Facebook. It was possible to opt out of this change which was announced as only to “improve the experience of Facebook users” (that’s kind of them – do I believe that?).

    I don’t know whether I chose to opt out, I suspect I did, but I have no way of knowing!!! Whatever … I only had 30-days to opt out then, and I can’t go back and opt-out now.

    I was alerted to the current impending change on February 8th, which is a take it, or leave it choice by this article in a well respected techie (UK-based) blog – The Register. It’s subsequently been updated, and may be updated again I suspect as more information is squeezed out of Facebook.

    Before Christmas in a meeting of the Cardiff U3A Computer Group, I referred to the repatriation of UK-data to the US as a consequence of Brexit. So far Facebook and Google (and there could be more) have announced their attention to do just that, and others will undoubtedly follow. Free from Europe, our government has said we will follow GDPR (it had very little option), but the US tech companies see the wisdom of not having a European base for their (our) data and are hopeful of less stringent Federal privacy restrictions under a new Democratic Party controlled Senate committed to introducing legislation.

    Once out of the European protection, we in Britain could in the course of time, and after the repatriation of Facebook data to California (read the article above), be deemed not to be part of the European area and so the protection offered by WhatsApp/Facebook suggested in this article in “The i“, would cease to apply. So the short-term acceptance of these Ts&Cs thinking they don’t apply to us, might be scuppered should the data-hosting move to the US.

    No certainties, just doubts and that’s where mistrust comes in.

    As of today, I’m at a loss to know what to advise or do. I’m hopeful of further clarification in the days to come, but I’ll leave acceptance of the new Ts&Cs to the last few days before February 8th.

    Your comments and thoughts most welcome.