[kictanet] WhatsApp to Move Ahead with its Privacy Updates

Thu Feb 25 14:46:36 EAT 2021

 @Liz,
With regard to Adverstising/Marketing the critical thing the DPC (Data Protection Commissioner) may look for is the opt-in process.  As long as the customer willingly opted into the App and consented after being presented with the privacy policy (describing what the data controller eg FB, etc) would do with their data, then FB is safe.
As for Data Minimization principle within the context of marketing, one would imagine marketing as one of those domains that would want the widest range of data points about an individual..so profiling for marketing purposes is perhaps unlimited...for example Cookies on a website can harvest so much personal information and can go to the depth of capturing and understanding your  location, your device type, your operating system, typing speed, click rates, duration on the website, page u visited, etc...
Is that illegal?
It depends...on whether you consented to it or not...and  whether the website/app owner gave u the option to opt in/out.
It is only illegal if they do the personal data harvesting without your knowledge and consent.
And now specifically to FB's new policy update that state that they will share our Whatsapp data with  its other family of products, to me it looks legal in the sense that they have alerted the users and given them the option to consent to it or opt out.
What worries me however, is the double standard.  
Why is the new Whatsapp policy not applicable to EU users?.  This seems to suggest that there is something the EU Data Protection Commissioners know that FB hopes our Kenyan/African Data Protection Commissioner dont know and will not know.  
But its just a matter time and we shall get to  understand the genesis of the double standards...so I do not understand why FB thinks having two separate policies for EU citizens and African Citizens is sustainable.
Who knows, maybe they will tell us during next weeks Webinar ;-)
walu

    On Thursday, February 25, 2021, 09:39:55 AM GMT+3, Liz Orembo via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:  

 @barrack, it would be interesting to hear how the principle of Data minimization applies when the specified purpose is advertising.
Where's our data protection guru @walu?
On Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 08:39 Mwara Gichanga via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Thank you all for your contributions, it should very exciting to engage FB on the webinar next week on Tuesday on these important issues and questions you have all raised
The discussion continues!

On Wed, 24 Feb 2021 at 8:57 PM, Wangu Mwangi via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Hi all, Apologies if I go a bit off track here as i just recently joined this conversation, but i wanted to share a personal experience i’m still puzzling over,
A couple of weeks ago, i suddenly lost all my contact information (names of contacts i’d been communicating with for years were no longer showing up when receiving calls, and i couldn’t find contacts when doing a search. But what its most strange is that at exactly the same time, I started getting notifications from WhatsApp with guidelines for retrieving lost contacts.
Does this mean i signed on to something i wasn’t even aware of? And if so, why would they mess up with saved information for contacts that aren’t even on my WhatApp lists?  This is really frightening to me as a lay person. Any explanations?
Thanks,
Wangu

On 24 Feb 2021, at 20:18, Keith Andere via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Dear Mwara,
These are pertinent questions you have raised here, and the discussion is really interesting. 
On question one, I think Facebook is not your ordinary platform to compare with other platforms such as bibles and picture filtering apps. I therefore care much more about the privacy of my data because it's a piece to a bigger global puzzle. For me whatsapp is a platform where many aspects of my life connects, my family, chama, landlord alerts, Mpesa is now sending statements to whatsapp. I would not want to imagine that I would want any of this used for business purposes, especially when right to opt out is denied.
I think this is also an opportunity to scale homegrown solutions and platforms because soon enough when we all move to platform B, they would pull the same strings on us! Seems we must buy our own lunch! I am still hanging on to the old terms waiting to be axed :)
Ni hayo tu kwa sasa!Keith
On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 7:39 AM Mwara Gichanga via kictanet <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

Dear listers,

Thanks to those who managed to contribute to the discussions yesterday. We are still collating our questions to Facebook regarding this subject. Today let's talk about what's at stake with the new terms. To guide our discussions, let's ponder over these questions:

1. We already have applications that mine our instant generated data from our mobile phones(eg bible apps, mobile lending apps, games etc). What's different with Whatsapp getting this data?

2. Is there anyone who has accepted these terms already? What's your experience so far?

Lets continue the conversation!
WarmlyMwara_______________________________________________
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