Facebook antitrust suits seek to divest Instagram, WhatsApp

WASHINGTON - US federal and state antitrust enforcers filed suit against Facebook on Wednesday claiming the social media giant abused its dominant position with its acquisitions of messaging services Instagram and WhatsApp.

Separate suits filed by the Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of state officials called for the divestment of Instagram and WhatsApp, services which have billions of users and are part of the Facebook "family" of applications.

"Facebook's actions to entrench and maintain its monopoly deny consumers the benefits of competition," said Ian Conner, director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition. 

"Our aim is to roll back Facebook's anticompetitive conduct and restore competition so that innovation and free competition can thrive."

A separate legal action was filed by state antitrust enforcers from 48 US states and territories.

"For nearly a decade, Facebook has used its dominance and monopoly power to crush smaller rivals and snuff out competition, all at the expense of everyday users," said New York state Attorney General Letitia James, who leads the coalition.

"Facebook used its power to suppress competition so it could take advantage of users and make billions by converting personal data into a cash cow."

The suits allege Facebook sought to squelch competition by acquiring the messaging applications -- Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014.

The action presages a fierce court battle seeking to force Facebook to divest the apps which have become an increasingly important element of the business model of the California giant and integrated into its technology.

Facebook said it would offer a detailed response after reviewing the cases but added: "Years after the FTC cleared our acquisitions, the government now wants a do-over with no regard for the impact that precedent would have on the broader business community or the people who choose our products every day."

DATA ADVANTAGES

The case is likely to hinge not only on Facebook's share of social media users but the vast troves of data it collects from some three billion users worldwide.

"Facebook has been spending its time surveilling users' personal information and profiting from it," James said.

"No company should have this much unchecked power over our personal information, and our social interactions."

Tiffany Li, a Boston University law professor who studies the sector, said that while Facebook has rivals bidding for internet users' attention it has a big advantage because of its access to data.

"One company owning multiple platforms is not, in itself, necessarily a bar to competition," Li said on Twitter. 

"However, one company having exclusive ownership of vast amounts of user data, with no potential for interoperability or access to competitors, can be anti-competitive."

Li added that new startups "have an uphill battle to reach users due to network effects, even if they have better products."

The FTC announced earlier this year it would review acquisitions made by five Big Tech firms over the past decade, opening the door to a wave of potential antitrust investigations.

The consumer protection agency said it would review deals made by Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet since 2010 amid growing complaints about tech platforms which have dominated key economic sectors.

The US Justice Department, which shares antitrust enforcement with the FTC, in October sued Google parent Alphabet, accusing the Silicon Valley giant of maintaining an "illegal monopoly" in online search and advertising and opening the door to a potential breakup. Eleven US states joined that case.

Scrutiny has been increasing for the large tech firms which have extended their dominance in recent years, including during the global pandemic as more people turn to internet platforms for goods and services.

Agence France-Presse

WhatsApp limits message forwarding to slow spread of COVID-19 misinformation

SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook Inc's WhatsApp tightened message forwarding limits on Tuesday, restricting users to sharing forwarded content one chat at a time after a jump in messages touting bogus medical advice since the start of the coronavirus crisis.

The pandemic, which has killed more than 70,000 people worldwide, has been accompanied by what the World Health Organization (WHO) has called an "infodemic" of misinformation, prompting governments and other authorities to urge social media companies to do more to combat the problem.

WhatsApp, which has more than 2 billion users worldwide, said in a blog post it made the change after observing a "significant increase" in the number of forwards since the start of the coronavirus crisis.

"We believe it's important to slow the spread of these messages down to keep WhatsApp a place for personal conversation," the statement said.

A WhatsApp spokesman said the new limit was in place indefinitely.

The service has been imposing gradual curbs on message forwarding since 2018, after viral rumors on its platform triggered a wave of mass beatings and deaths in India.

Since last year, users have been able to forward a message to only five individuals or groups at once, down from an earlier limit of 20. The app also labeled any messages that had been forwarded more than 5 times.

Facebook and Twitter have responded to the deluge of inaccurate medical information posted in recent months by barring users from posting misleading information about the coronavirus, including denials of expert guidance and encouragement of fake treatments.

But direct content moderation is not possible on WhatsApp, where chats are protected by end-to-end encryption blocking even the app itself from viewing content shared by users.

That allows groups of hundreds of people to exchange texts, photos and videos, with no way to monitor the messages' origin or full reach.

WhatsApp said in its blog post that the previous limits set on forwards led to a 25 percent decrease in such messages.

The app also encourages people to flag suspicious content to fact checking organizations and has enabled the WHO and national health authorities to share reliable information about the new coronavirus on the service using automated accounts.

-Reuters-

Facebook scrambles as use soars in time of COVID-19 isolation

SAN FRANCISCO, United States - Facebook said Wednesday it would place "authoritative" coronavirus content at the top of user feeds as it scrambled to keep up with increased usage and stem the flow of misinformation on its platform and WhatsApp messaging.

The leading social network said it has nearly doubled server capacity to power WhatsApp as people in isolation place more voice and video calls using the popular messaging service.

Facebook also donated $1 million to the International Fact-Checking Network to expand the presence of local fact-checkers and curb misinformation on WhatsApp, said Facebook head of health Kang-Xing Jin.

"Teams are hard at work to make sure all the services run smoothly, because this is clearly a time when people want to stay connected," Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said while updating reporters on the company's efforts.

"We want to make sure we do our part to alleviate loneliness."

As part of an effort to be a resource for reliable information about the coronavirus crisis, Facebook is rolling out an information center that will be displayed at the top of news feeds at the social network.

The information hub was built in collaboration with health organizations and will roll out in the US and Europe through Wednesday, with plans to expand it to other locations.

"Our goal is to put authoritative information in front of everyone who uses our services," Zuckerberg said.

The hub will display content from public health experts, celebrities, academics and others encouraging ways to reduce coronavirus risk -- such as by taking social-distancing seriously, according to Zuckerberg.

Facebook is under intense scrutiny regarding how it prevents hoaxes or dangerously misleading information regarding the deadly pandemic from spreading on its platform, according to Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi.

"It's not politics. It's not (an) election. This is killing people," Milanesi said of the importance of getting people the truth about the coronavirus.

"If they're smart -- I know it sounds callous on my part -- but they would use this to win back some of the positive sentiment around the brand."

Moderation modified

Facebook has been grappling with making it possible for content to be moderated at home by workers -- many of them contracted through outside companies -- who are working remotely to reduce coronavirus risk.

"This is a big one we have been focused on for the past few days," Zuckerberg said.

"There are certain kinds of content moderation that are very sensitive -- such as suicide and self harm -- and if you are working on that content for a long time it can be very emotionally challenging."

Some content being checked by moderators also comes with privacy concerns.

Facebook is moving the most sensitive types of content moderation to full-time employees for now, Zuckerberg said.

"I am quite worried the isolation of people staying at home could lead to more depression or mental health issues and I want to make sure we are ahead of that with more people working on suicide and depression prevention, not less," Zuckerberg said.

"That will cause a trade-off with (moderating) content not representing imminent physical risk to people."

Zuckerberg vowed that Facebook will make sure people doing contract work for the social network get full pay even if they aren't able to do their regular jobs from home.

Facebook will continue to use artificial intelligence systems to watch for banned content.

Zuckerberg at home

Zuckerberg is among the Facebook employees working from home.

"I don't think it would be very good to encourage everyone else to do that and not do that myself," Zuckerberg said of working from home, with his doctor wife Priscilla and their children.

"We are trying to find a way to balance working from home and taking care of kids as well; that is a challenge we are trying to help the whole company to navigate."

Zuckerberg refuted US media reports that Facebook is in talks with Washington over potentially using personal data from smartphones to track and combat the coronavirus outbreak.

"We are not aware of any active conversations or asks with the US or other governments at this point asking for this data directly," Zuckerberg said.

"I don't think it would make sense to shares people's data in a way that people didn't opt in to doing."

Zuckerberg said that Facebook is not open to sharing users' data with governments, and that "no one is asking."

source: news.abs-cbn.com

WhatsApp defends encryption as it tops 2 billion users

SAN FRANCISCO - The Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp said Wednesday it now has more than 2 billion users around the world as it reaffirmed its commitment to strong encryption to protect privacy.

WhatsApp, acquired by Facebook in 2014, has grown into one of the most widely used services in the Facebook "family" of apps, offering free messaging along with voice and video calls.

"Private conversations that once were only possible face-to-face can now take place across great distances through instant chats and video calling," a WhatsApp blog post said. 

"There are so many significant and special moments that take place over WhatsApp and we are humbled and honored to reach this milestone."

The statement said WhatsApp remained committed to its "strong encryption" that enables users to connect privately even amid calls by law enforcement in the United States and elsewhere to provide more access.

"Strong encryption is a necessity in modern life. We will not compromise on security because that would make people less safe," WhatsApp said.

"For even more protection, we work with top security experts, employ industry leading technology to stop misuse as well as provide controls and ways to report issues -- without sacrificing privacy."

Last week, child protection organizations called on Facebook to halt plans for strong encryption of all its platforms, saying that would allow predators to operate freely.

WhatsApp employs "end to end encryption" which can in many cases prevent law enforcement from accessing user data even with a court order.

The social network is working to extend end-to-end encryption across its messaging applications, including Facebook Messenger and Instagram.

BACK DOOR DILEMMA

Child protection groups have expressed fears that stronger encryption of online exchanges would facilitate the sharing of child pornography.

Backers of strong encryption argue that any special access or "backdoors" allowed for law enforcement would weaken security and could be exploited by criminals, hackers and authoritarian governments.

Officials from the US, Britain and Australia late last year called on Facebook to allow authorities to circumvent encryption to better fight extremism, child pornography and other crimes.

The heads of Facebook's WhatsApp and Messenger, Will Cathcart and Stan Chudnovsky, responded in a letter to officials from the three countries that allowing this kind of "backdoor" access "would be a gift to criminals, hackers and repressive regimes" while leaving users vulnerable.

Facebook's stance on encryption has been backed by more than 100 activist organizations, security experts and industry groups who warned against efforts to force tech companies to weaken encryption.

Despite its strong encryption, WhatsApp has seen flaws exploited in cyberspace.

Human rights activists have said that spyware hidden in WhatsApp messages, possible developed by Israel-based NSO Group, was used to track dissidents and others. 

Amazon chief Jeff Bezos's phone is also believed to have been infected by spyware hidden in a WhatsApp message from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

WhatsApp in October sued NSO Group, accusing it of using the messaging service to conduct cyberespionage on journalists, human rights activists and others.

BREAKUP? 

WhatsApp is one member of the Facebook app "family" that includes its core social network, Instagram and Messenger.

Facebook said recently some 2.89 billion people globally are daily users of at least one of these services.

But the growth has also attracted attention of regulators and activists concerned over the dominance of major tech platforms. Presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren has been among those calling for the breakup of the big technology firms.

Facebook has argued against the idea of a breakup, saying the company is better able to keep its services safe and secure with a unified infrastructure.

Agence France-Presse

How not to plot secret foreign policy: On a cellphone and WhatsApp

Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor at the center of the impeachment investigation into the conduct of Ukraine policy, makes a living selling cybersecurity advice through his companies. President Donald Trump even named him the administration’s first informal “cybersecurity adviser.”

But inside the National Security Council, officials expressed wonderment that Giuliani was running his “irregular channel” of Ukraine diplomacy over open cell lines and communications apps in Ukraine that the Russians have deeply penetrated.

In his testimony to the House impeachment inquiry, Tim Morrison, who is leaving as the National Security Council’s head of Europe and Russia, recalled expressing astonishment to William B. Taylor Jr., who was sitting in as the chief US diplomat in Ukraine, that the leaders of the “irregular channel” seemed to have little concern about revealing their conversations to Moscow.

“He and I discussed a lack of, shall we say, OPSEC, that much of Rudy’s discussions were happening over an unclassified cellphone or, perhaps as bad, WhatsApp messages, and therefore you can only imagine who else knew about them,” Morrison testified. OPSEC is the government’s shorthand for operational security.

He added: “I remember being focused on the fact that there were text messages, the fact that Rudy was having all of these phone calls over unclassified media,” he added. “And I found that to be highly problematic and indicative of someone who didn’t really understand how national security processes are run.”

Giuliani’s partner, Gordon D. Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, held an open cellphone conversation with Trump from a restaurant in Ukraine, apparently loud enough for his table mates to overhear. And Trump’s own cellphone use has led US intelligence officials to conclude that the Chinese — with whom he is negotiating a huge trade deal, among other sensitive topics — are doubtless privy to the president’s conversations.

But Ukraine is a particularly acute case. It is the country where the Russians have so deeply compromised the communications network that in 2014 they posted on the internet conversations between a top Obama administration diplomat, Victoria Nuland, and the US ambassador to Ukraine at the time, Geoffrey R. Pyatt. Their intent was to portray the Americans — not entirely inaccurately — as trying to manage the ouster of a corrupt, pro-Russian president of Ukraine.

The incident made Nuland, who left the State Department soon after Trump’s election, “Patient Zero” in the Russian information-warfare campaign against the United States, before Moscow’s interference in the US presidential election.

But it also served as a warning that if you go to Ukraine, stay off communications networks that Moscow wired.

That advice would seem to apply especially to Giuliani, who speaks around the world on cybersecurity issues. Ukraine was the petri dish for President Vladimir Putin of Russia, the place where he practiced the art of trying to change vote counts, initiating information warfare and, in two celebrated incidents, turning out the lights in parts of the country.

Giuliani, impeachment investigators were told, was Trump’s interlocutor with the new Ukrainian government about opening investigations into the president’s political opponents. The simultaneous suspension of $391 million in military aid to Ukraine, which some have testified was on Trump’s orders, fulfilled Moscow’s deepest wish at a moment of ground war in eastern Ukraine and a daily, grinding cyberwar in the capital.

It remains unknown why the Russians have not made any of these conversations public, assuming they possess them. But inside the intelligence agencies, the motives of Russian intelligence officers is a subject of heated speculation.

A former senior US intelligence official speculated that one explanation is that Giuliani and Sondland were essentially doing the Russians’ work for them. Holding up military aid — for whatever reason — assists the Russian “gray war” in eastern Ukraine and sows doubts in Kyiv that the United States is wholly supportive of Ukraine, a fear that many State Department and National Security Council officials have expressed in testimony.

But Giuliani also was stoking an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory that Putin has engaged in, suggesting that someone besides Russia — in this telling, Ukrainian hackers who now supposedly possess a server that once belonged to the Democratic National Committee — was responsible for the hacking that ran from 2015 to 2016.

Trump raised this possibility in his July 25 phone call with the new Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. It was not the first time he had cast doubt on Russia’s involvement: In a call to a New York Times reporter moments after meeting Putin for the first time in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017, Trump endorsed Putin’s view that Russia is so good at cyberoperations that it would have never been caught. “That makes sense, doesn’t it?” he asked.

He expressed doubts again in 2018, in a news conference with Putin in Helsinki, Finland. That was only days after the Justice Department indicted a dozen Russian intelligence officers for their role in the hack; the administration will not say if it now believes that indictment was flawed because there is evidence that Ukranians were responsible.

Whether or not he believes Ukraine was involved, Giuliani certainly understood the risks of talking on open lines, particularly in a country with an active cyberwar.

As a former prosecutor, he knows what the United States and its adversaries can intercept. In more recent years, he has spoken around the world on cybersecurity challenges. And as the president’s lawyer, he was a clear target.

Giuliani said in a phone interview Monday that nothing he talked about on the phone or in texts was classified. “All of my conversations, I can say uniformly, were on an unclassified basis,” he said.

His findings about what happened in Ukraine were “generated from my own investigations” and had nothing to do with the US government, he said, until he was asked to talk with Kurt D. Volker, then the special envoy for Ukraine, in a conversation that is now part of the impeachment investigation. Volker will testify in public Tuesday.

Giuliani said that he never “conducted a shadow foreign policy, I conducted a defense of my client,” Trump. “The State Department apparatchiks are all upset that I intervened at all,” he said, adding that he was the victim of “wild accusations.”

Sondland is almost as complex a case. While he is new to diplomacy, he is the owner of a boutique set of hotels and certainly is not unaware of cybersecurity threats because the hotel industry is a major target, as Marriott learned a year ago.

But Sondland held a conversation with Trump last summer in a busy restaurant in Kyiv, surrounded by other US officials. Testimony indicates Trump’s voice was loud enough for others at the table to hear.

But the Russians most likely did not need a reservation because Ukraine’s phone system is deeply compromised. After the Nuland-Pyatt interception — which was held on an open line — embassy personnel have been told to assume that whatever they say routes back through Russian intelligence.


2019 The New York Times Company

source: news.abs-cbn.com

India seeks answers from WhatsApp after cyber espionage

India demanded answers from WhatsApp over a snooping scandal Thursday after coming under fire from critics who accused authorities of using malware installed on the Facebook-owned messaging service to spy on citizens.

WhatsApp has filed a lawsuit in the United States against Israeli technology firm NSO Group, accusing it of using the hugely popular instant messaging platform to conduct cyberespionage on nearly 1,400 journalists, diplomats, dissidents and human right activists worldwide. 

The Israeli firm has denied journalists and activists were targeted and said that it only licenses its software to governments for "fighting crime and terror".

Nearly two dozen activists, lawyers and journalists were targeted in India -- WhatsApp's biggest market with some 400 million active users -- according to Indian media reports.

The Indian Express reported WhatsApp confirmed a number of Indian users had been targeted by the Pegasus spyware, which installed itself on their devices and relayed back data to the hackers. 

New Delhi has asked WhatsApp to "explain the kind of breach and what it is doing to safeguard the privacy of millions of Indian citizens," information and technology minister Ravi Shankar Prasad wrote on Twitter, denying the government had used the malware to spy on its citizens. 

But opposition leaders accused the government of invading citizens' privacy.

"A government that spies on journalists/activists/Opposition leaders and treats its own citizens like criminals has lost the right to lead in our democracy," main opposition Congress party spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said in a tweet.

Indian media reports said 20 activists, lawyers and journalists were informed by WhatsApp recently that their phones were compromised for two weeks in May. 

Rights activists and dissidents in India have accused the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu nationalist government of intimidating them over their criticism of policies. 

Since Modi's ascent to the top post in 2014, it has banned hundreds of non government organisations and stopped funding of many more. 

Rupali Jadhav, an activist, and one of those contacted by WhatsApp said she suspected that she was targeted for her work on caste, class and gender rights.

"We are told India is a democracy. But if our right to privacy is violated, doesn't that raise questions?" she told an Indian online outlet. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

WhatsApp says Israeli firm used its app in spy program

SAN FRANCISCO — WhatsApp sued Israeli cybersurveillance firm NSO Group in federal court Tuesday, claiming the company used the popular messaging service in a wide-ranging spy campaign on journalists and human-rights activists.

WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, claims in the lawsuit that an NSO Group program used WhatsApp to spy on more than 1,400 targets in 20 countries, including 100 journalists and human rights activists.

Over the past six months, WhatsApp, working closely with Citizen Lab, a research group affiliated with the University of Toronto, discovered an attack on its users.

The investigation started last spring after Citizen Lab charged that NSO Group’s technology had exploited a WhatsApp security hole to hack the phone of a London lawyer. The lawyer represented several plaintiffs in lawsuits that accused NSO Group of providing tools to hack the phones of a Saudi Arabian dissident living in Canada, a Qatari citizen and a group of Mexican journalists and activists.

The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. NSO Group did not immediately respond to request for comment.

In its lawsuit, WhatsApp said that between April and May 2019, it discovered NSO Group tools were used to hijack the phones of its users. WhatsApp said that based on the country codes of the numbers targeted, NSO Group’s tools were used to hack the phones of people in Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico.

WhatsApp said in a statement that it was informing affected customers with special WhatsApp messages. The company is seeking a permanent injunction banning NSO from its service and called on lawmakers to ban the use of cyberweapons like those sold by NSO Group to governments all over the world.

“We agree with U.N. Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression David Kaye’s call for a moratorium on these attacks,” WhatsApp said in a statement. “There must be strong legal oversight of cyber weapons like the one used in this attack to ensure they are not used to violate individual rights and freedoms people deserve wherever they are in the world.”

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Google reveals years-long 'indiscriminate' iPhone hack

WASHINGTON - Google security experts uncovered an "indiscriminate" hacking operation that targeted iPhones over a period of at least 2 years and used websites to implant malicious software to access photos, user locations and other data.

In a post Thursday on the blog of Google's Project Zero security taskforce, cyber experts did not name the hacked websites hosting the attacks, but estimated they received thousands of visitors a week. 

"Simply visiting the hacked site was enough for the exploit server to attack your device, and if it was successful, install a monitoring implant," said Project Zero's Ian Beer.

Once installed, the malicious software "primarily focused on stealing files and uploading live location data," Beer said, adding it had been able to access encrypted messenger apps like Telegram, WhatsApp and iMessage.

Google hangouts and Gmail had also been affected, he added in the post, which provided a detailed breakdown of how the malicious software targeted and exploited iPhone vulnerabilities.

Most of the vulnerabilities targeted were found in the iPhone's default Safari web browser, Beer said, adding that the Project Zero team had discovered them in almost every operating system from iOS 10 through to the current iOS 12 version.

Once embedded in a user's iPhone, the malicious software sent back stolen data, including live user location data back to a "command and control server" every 60 seconds.

Beer said Google had informed Apple of the attacks in February, and Apple subsequently released a security patch for the iOS 12.1.

Long the driver of Apple's money-making machine, iPhone revenue overall was down 12 percent from last year to $26 billion.

The tech giant sent out invitations on Thursday to a September event at its Silicon Valley campus where it is expected to unveil a new-generation iPhone.

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Personal data at the center of fight vs Facebook, Google

LONDON -- Germany’s top antitrust enforcer, Andreas Mundt, recently asked a room full of lawyers, academics and regulators to imagine a wall filled with their personal information collected by Facebook and Google. He told them to picture it stocked with their data broken up into categories like finances, location, relationships and hobbies.

“That is you,” Mundt said. “And I promise you this wall knows you better than your wife.”

Few listened to Mundt when, a few years ago, he began raising alarms about the data collected by the tech giants. While online services like Facebook and Google did not charge a dime, people paid a high price by giving the companies so many personal details, he argued. And the people had no choice, because the companies had no real competitors.

But in February, his agency ruled that Facebook had broken the country’s law and demanded that the company stop automatically sharing data among the services it owns, like Instagram and WhatsApp, or websites that use its “like” and “share” buttons. It was the first such ruling in Europe, putting in practice ideas that had never fully escaped academic and think tank debates.

As US regulators and lawmakers intensify their scrutiny of Big Tech, there is a lot of discussion about whether or how they could accuse the companies of violating antitrust law. Often, regulators look to whether a company is causing consumer harm — a standard that can be hard to prove when a service is free.

The response from Mundt is simple. The only way to take on Facebook and some of its peers is to attack what they value most: data.

He argues that the companies are so dominant in their core businesses that consumers, if they want to search the internet or be on social media, have no choice but to share their personal data. The data then strengthens the tech companies’ position over rivals even more — and therefore is anticompetitive, Mundt says.

The companies have strongly fought against his argument. But it is gaining traction in antitrust circles, as Mundt, who has led Germany’s antitrust agency for almost a decade, urges officials in other nations to make the same point.

After the Facebook ruling, Mundt received calls from regulators and lawyers around the world to discuss the idea. He helped organize a meeting of fellow antitrust officials in Colombia, where they spent four days discussing tech regulation. Joseph Simons, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, and Makan Delrahim, head of the Justice Department antitrust division, were among those attending.

“The German authority is way out in front here and in a real sense the leading antitrust authority in the world with respect to these technology issues,” said Thomas Vinje, partner at the Clifford Chance law firm in Brussels and a veteran of tech industry antitrust battles involving Microsoft and Google.

Other regulators are looking to build on Germany’s approach. The European Commission is in the early stages of an investigation into Facebook, including its use of data, said a person familiar with the inquiry who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Online platforms constantly collect data on users: what is clicked on, how fast a person scrolls past a post, what video a person stops to watch. The information helps a company like Facebook infer characteristics about interests, personal connections and financial demographics to better target advertising, or train machine-learning algorithms that can be used for future products.

It is an extraordinarily lucrative business model. Facebook made $55 billion from advertising last year, while Google’s ad sales totaled $116 billion.

What’s distressing to regulators is the lack of new competitors, a trend Mundt attributes to a company’s access to data and plentiful financial resources. He says Facebook controls more than 95 percent of the social networking market in Germany. Without competition, the social network unfairly forces people to make an all-or-nothing choice between agreeing to unlimited data collection or not using Facebook at all.

When investigating Facebook, German regulators built a map of the information the company collects. It looked similar to the one Mundt described during his recent speech — a web of personal information that branched into details about homeownership, life events, politics and buying behavior.

Mundt contends that Facebook and other tech giants don’t need to be broken up, as Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others have suggested. Instead, he thinks governments should limit their ability to collect data. The approach can have an effect similar to a breakup by isolating a company’s different services.

“The business model is to gather and process data, full stop. There is nothing else,” Mundt said in an interview. “If they don’t have data, they can have 10,000 very intelligent engineers who tell you what you can make out of data, but without the data you don’t make anything.”

Germany is at the forefront of a deeper realization among regulators and policymakers globally that laws must evolve to keep pace with technological change. Rules that regulate industries like oil or transportation, where dominance is measured in physical goods and price gouging, don’t as easily apply to services that are digital, are often free and rely on people’s attention and data more than infrastructure.

Europe has regularly used antitrust law to take on the tech industry. The European Commission has punished Amazon, Apple, Google and Qualcomm in recent years for unfair competition. And more actions are expected in the years ahead. An investigation into Amazon’s use of data was started last year. Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s top antitrust regulator, has said data must play a more central role in assessing market dominance in the digital economy, particularly when reviewing acquisitions by tech companies.

“Antitrust law will become irrelevant in the digital marketplace if it doesn’t adopt to understanding the power of data in analyzing market power and dominance,” said Gene Kimmelman, former chief counsel of the Justice Department antitrust division who is now president of Public Knowledge, a public interest advocacy group that favors stronger oversight of tech platforms.

Critics say Germany’s aggressive approach stretches the limits of antitrust law and won’t stand up to court reviews. Mundt’s focus on data is seen by some as overly simplistic and, if adopted widely, will make it harder to offer free services. Because data is shared widely among different businesses and industries, critics say, the attempts to limit its flow will cause unintended consequences and disruptions.

“European regulators are using competition policy to pursue objectives that are unrelated to competition,” said Eline Chivot, a senior policy analyst in Brussels for the Center for Data Innovation, a group funded by a Washington think tank whose board includes representatives from Amazon, Apple and Microsoft. “It introduces uncertainty.”

Facebook is appealing the German decision, arguing that it was transparent with users about how data is collected. The social network argues that its use of data helps improve the service and that German regulators singled it out for practices common across the internet.

Even those who support Germany’s broader goals question whether its approach will be effective. The February ruling allows Facebook to continue sharing data between Instagram and WhatsApp if it gets users to click a new permission box. Many wonder how effective the ruling will be because most people will sign off without much thought.

“It might be that you’ll end up in the same place you started,” said Jason Furman, a senior economic adviser in the Obama administration.

Furman, a Harvard professor advising the British government on tech regulation, said that rather than relying on antitrust law alone, countries should create a dedicated regulator for the tech industry, to match those covering the banking, health and transportation sectors of the economy. He said a watchdog with expertise in the field could better review a company’s behavior and use of data on a case-by-case basis. He said new laws requiring companies to make some of their data available to rivals also could seed competition.

In the United States, where antitrust law has a narrower scope than in Europe, experts say Germany’s approach won’t work because it relies on privacy and consumer protection rules that don’t exist in America. But lawmakers and federal regulators in Washington are studying new ways to account for data in regulating the digital economy.

Delrahim, the head of the Justice Department antitrust division, said in a speech last month that lack of competition may be leading to weaker online privacy protections. “Diminished quality is also a type of harm to competition,” he said.

Mundt says Germany’s approach is not a final answer, but he hopes it inspires bolder action by regulators, who he says must push legal boundaries just as the companies have done.

“We need innovative cases,” he said. “What we have done with Facebook can’t be found in a textbook.”

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Facebook says glitches affecting across platforms resolved

Facebook Inc said on Wednesday an issue with uploading or sending media files on its apps and platforms has been resolved.

Earlier in the day, many users globally were not able to send and receive images, videos and other files over its social media platforms including WhatsApp and Instagram, and the social media company said it was working to fix the problem.

"During one of our routine maintenance operations, we triggered an issue that is making it difficult for some people to upload or send photos and videos," Facebook had said.

Facebook, which gets tens of millions of dollars from advertising revenue daily, declined to comment when asked whether it will refund businesses. In a similar incident in March, the company said it would consider refunding advertisers for lost exposure.

"The disruption appears to be related to an internal infrastructure or application issue," said ThousandEyes, a company that monitors internet traffic globally.

The partial outage frustrated users of the world's largest social network, with many taking to Twitter to complain.

More than 14,000 users reported issues with Instagram, while more than 7,500 and 1,600 users complained about Facebook and WhatsApp, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.

Downdetector's live outage map showed the issues were mainly in parts of Europe and the United States. 

source: news.abs-cbn.com

Facebook stops app pre-installs on new Huawei phones: report

MANILA -- Facebook no longer allows Huawei to pre-install its suite of apps on new devices, as US companies comply with Washington's blacklisting of the Chinese tech giant, Reuters reported Friday.

Customers who already have Huawei phones can still use and update the apps on its devices, but new units will no longer be able to have Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram pre-installed, according to the social networking giant.


The Facebook ban applies to any Huawei phone that has not yet left the factory, Reuters reported, citing a person familiar with the matter. Facebook declined to comment on when the suspension took place.

Google, based in the US like Facebook, earlier said it would no longer provide Android software to Huawei phones after a 90-day reprieve ends in August. Google's Playstore and apps will remain available to current Huawei models.

Washington has long accused Huawei of being a security risk due to its close ties to Beijing, something the Shenzhen-based firm has denied.

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WhatsApp urges users to upgrade app after report of spyware attack

JERUSALEM - Facebook's WhatsApp on Tuesday urged users to upgrade to the latest version of its popular messaging app following a report that users could be vulnerable to having malicious spyware installed on phones without their knowledge.

"WhatsApp encourages people to upgrade to the latest version of our app, as well as keep their mobile operating system up to date, to protect against potential targeted exploits designed to compromise information stored on mobile devices," a spokesman said.

"We are constantly working alongside industry partners to provide the latest security enhancements to help protect our users."

The Financial Times reported that a vulnerability in WhatsApp allowed attackers to inject spyware on phones by ringing up targets using the app's phone call function. It said the spyware was developed by Israeli cyber surveillance company NSO Group.

Asked about the report, NSO said its technology is licensed to authorized government agencies "for the sole purpose of fighting crime and terror," and that it does not operate the system itself.

"We investigate any credible allegations of misuse and if necessary, we take action, including shutting down the system. Under no circumstances would NSO be involved in the operating or identifying of targets of its technology, which is solely operated by intelligence and law enforcement agencies," the company said.

"NSO would not or could not use its technology in its own right to target any person or organization, including this individual."

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Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp working again after outages

Facebook Inc said it restored services on Sunday after some users could not access its social networking site, photo-sharing network Instagram and messaging app WhatsApp.

However, Facebook did not specify the cause or scope of the outages.

"Earlier today, some people may have experienced trouble connecting to the family of apps. The issue has since been resolved; we're sorry for any inconvenience," a Facebook spokesman told Reuters.

The issue comes after Facebook experienced one of its longest outages in March, when some users around the globe could not access Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp for more than 24 hours.

On Sunday, Downdetector.com indicated that there were more than 12,000 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook at its peak.

The outage monitoring website also showed that, at the peak on Sunday, there were more than 3,000 incidents of people reporting issues with WhatsApp and over 7,000 with Instagram.

Downdetector.com's live outage map showed that the issues were mainly in Europe and Asia.

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Facebook down for some users - Downdetector.com

Facebook Inc's social networking site is inaccessible to some users across the world on Sunday, according to Downdetector.com, a website which monitors outages.

Technology website The Verge reported that Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp were also inaccessible to many users around the world.

Other news outlets have also reported on the outage.

Downdetector.com showed that there are more than 9000 incidents of people reporting issues with Facebook.

Downdetector.com's live outage map showed that the issues cropped up in Europe, the East Coast of the United States, and Southeast Asia including the Philippines.

Facebook had experienced one of its longest outages in March, when some users around the globe faced trouble accessing Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp for over 24 hours.

- With a report from Reuters

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Zuckerberg says Facebook's future is going big on private chats

SAN FRANCISCO -- Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday the company would encrypt conversations on more of its messaging services and make them compatible, the latest sign that the world's biggest social network sees its future in intimate online chats.

Zuckerberg said in a post on his Facebook profile that within a few years direct messaging would dwarf discussion on the traditional, open platform of Facebook's news feed, where public posts can go viral across the world.

"Working towards implementing end-to-end encryption for all private communications is the right thing to do," Zuckerberg said. He cautioned that details of the plan could change as the company consults experts throughout 2019.

The strategy could frustrate law enforcement surveillance efforts as well as lawmakers who have called on Facebook to better moderate user content. It also would limit the company's ability to generate revenue through targeted ads.

But Zuckerberg said he could live with those tradeoffs because users want better control of their data while still having easy access to their contacts.

As part of Zuckerberg's strategy, a Facebook user would be able to communicate with WhatsApp users while only having a Messenger account and vice versa. Users would also have more options for how long chats are saved, he added.

"The future of communication will increasingly shift to private, encrypted services where people can be confident what they say to each other stays secure and their messages and content won't stick around forever," he said. "This is the future I hope we will help bring about."

Facebook shares rose 0.7 percent on Wednesday. Shares in Snap Inc, which owns messaging app Snapchat, ended down more than 2 percent.

Zuckerberg acknowledged that the public may be skeptical about Facebook's privacy push given the company does not have a "strong reputation for building privacy protective services."

Lawmakers, users and investors have expressed concerns over the last two years that Facebook is not doing enough to safeguard user data after a series of breaches and privacy bugs.

But Zuckerberg wrote that "we've repeatedly shown that we can evolve to build the services that people really want."

Facebook is one of the biggest global players in private messaging with its WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, each used by more than 1 billion people. Only WhatsApp fully secures message content from all outsiders, including Facebook itself.

Police have raised concerns about introducing similar security to the other services because they would no longer be able to access online chat records to track religious extremists or other perpetrators.

Regulators have called for Facebook to increase moderation of user content, but more encryption would make it difficult to view and track problematic posts.

Encrypted conversations also limit Facebook's ability to send targeted advertisements. Facebook may need to look for new ways to insert itself between businesses and consumers to generate revenue.

Tencent Holdings Ltd's WeChat app has shown how a messaging service can generate revenue through not only displaying ads, but also being a marketplace for games, merchandise and services such as taxi rides.

Facebook has encouraged messaging conversations between businesses and consumers since at least 2016 but has not disclosed its revenue from the efforts.

Zuckerberg said on Wednesday that "significant thought" still needs to go into integrating commerce into messaging.

James Cordwell, a financial analyst at Atlantic Equities, said Facebook's strategy risks undercutting its current way of making money.

"But if they can pull off this WeChat-esque strategy," he said, "it could open up material revenue streams beyond just advertising, something that investors have been craving for quite some time."

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UK says WhatsApp lets pedophiles and gangsters operate

MANCHESTER - Britain said WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption communication services allowed pedophiles and organized crime groups to operate beyond the reach of the law and called on the messaging service to move faster to help governments catch offenders.

After 4 militant attacks in Britain that killed 36 people this year, senior ministers have stepped up demands over the past 6 months to make internet companies do more to suppress extremist content and allow access to encrypted communications.

The government says full-scale encryption has complicated the job of law enforcement both in thwarting extremist attacks and in investigating more commonplace crimes.


Internet companies say they want to help governments remove extremist or criminal material but also have to balance the demands of state security with civil liberties.

"Every day hundreds of millions of people use WhatsApp to communicate with each other – including to share sensitive personal information. Encryption helps to keep all those communications safe and secure," a WhatsApp spokeswoman said.

In the face of resistance from the industry, Prime Minister Theresa May - a former interior minister - proposed trying to regulate cyberspace after a deadly attack on London Bridge in June.

Such a sharp public reprimand for WhatsApp indicates frustration within the government.

"We also know that end-to-end encryption services like WhatsApp, are being used by paedophiles," Home Secretary Amber Rudd told party activists in the northern English city of Manchester.

"I do not accept it is right that companies should allow them and other criminals to operate beyond the reach of law enforcement," Rudd said. "We must require the industry to move faster and more aggressively. They have the resources and there must be greater urgency."

WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, and similar services let users communicate with pictures, video and text, using "end-to-end" encryption that can be read only with a key held on the user's device. Without access to the devices, security services cannot read the messages.

Rudd also called on technology giants such as Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter to go further and faster to counter extremist material.

The industry argues that encryption is vital to protecting the wealth of personal information that electronic devices collect about individuals and for securing everything from banking and shopping to government records. They say they need to balance demands by law enforcement with privacy protections.

"Child exploitation has absolutely no place on our service -- which is why we work with law enforcement to identify these accounts and block them," the WhatsApp spokeswoman said.

Britain's MI5 security service has said it needs access to encrypted communications to foil attacks. In the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has pushed for full access to encrypted communications and devices, but Congress has so far refused.

The issues are hotly debated even among security officials. Jonathan Evans, who ran Britain’s MI5 spy service from 2007 until 2013, said that while encryption did make attacks harder to stop, it also helped to prevent criminals and even foreign governments from hacking private data.

Security Minister Ben Wallace, who oversees British counter-terrorism and communications data legislation, said he was disturbed to see that end-to-end encryption services prevented security services from tracking criminal messaging.

"We see on a daily basis that this end-to-end encryption protects pedophiles, it protects organised crime too, but it is very disturbing in my job when I know that we know 2 pedophiles are talking and we think they are doing something about snatching a child but we don't know and we can't get into these communications," Wallace said.

"There are other ways I can't talk about which we think they can help us more without necessarily entering into end-to-end encryption. So we think they can do more."

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WhatsApp adds Snapchat-like disappearing status

MANILA - Messaging platform WhatsApp has rolled out in the Philippines its "status" feature, allowing users to share photos and videos that expire in 24 hours.

The disappearing posts were pioneered by Snapchat and has since been adopted by properties of social media giant Facebook.

Before WhatsApp, Facebook added a "stories" feature to its Instagram photo-sharing feature and "My Day" to Facebook messenger.

WhatsApp allows users to limit the audience of status posts. A camera icon was also added to the upper left side of the interface for easier posting.

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Brazil court orders lifting of suspension of WhatsApp services

A Brazilian judge on Thursday ordered the lifting of a 48-hour suspension of the services in Brazil of Facebook Inc's WhatsApp phone-messaging application, overturning an order from a lower court.

The 13-hour interruption of WhatsApp's text message and Internet telephone service caused outrage in Latin America's largest country, where the company estimates it has 100 million personal users, and led to angry exchanges on the floor of Congress and social media.

Rival messaging system Telegram said on Twitter that it received 1 million downloads in Brazil in one day due to the outage.

A judge in the commercial capital Sao Paulo had ordered the suspension of WhatsApp's services from midnight on Wednesday (0200 GMT Thursday) after the California-based company, despite a fine, failed to comply with two judicial rulings to share information in a criminal case.

Felipe Santos, who works as as salesman at a clothing store in downtown Sao Paulo, said the suspension had cut communication with his customers.

"They told me we will have to go 48 hours without WhatsApp, but it's terrible not to have WhatsApp. I am using my mobile phone, but it's not the same, without my contacts, without being able to talk to people, without talking to my customers… But what can I do? All I can do now is wait," he said.

Real estate agent, Felipe Constantino, said he felt lost without WhatsApp.

"I use it to talk to friends, for work, with family... It's hard to not have it (WhatsApp) because we are used to using it a lot every day, so I'm still kind of lost," he said.

After several hours of suspension, WhatsApp services were restored following the injunction from the higher court.

Judge Xavier de Souza from the 11th criminal court of Sao Paulo ruled to re-establish the service, but recommended a higher fine be imposed on WhatsApp.

The incident highlighted growing international tensions between technology companies' privacy concerns and national authorities' efforts to use social media to recover information on possible criminal activities.

Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg also spoke out against the court order in a post.

According to local networks, the criminal case involves a drug trafficker linked to one of Sao Paulo's most dangerous criminal gangs, the PCC, or First Command of the Capital. The trafficker allegedly used WhatsApp services while committing crimes.

WhatsApp is widely used by people, companies and federal and local governments to send messages and share pictures and videos.

Lawyer Guilherme Ieno, who specialises in Internet cases, said Brazil's new internet bill clearly defends freedom of communication.

"It doesn't matter who sent it (messages), to whom it was sent and what its content is, what matters is that there must be freedom of communication, so these messages must circulate freely within the internet. It is also not the responsibility of the content's host to -- Brazil's internet bill also makes that clear -- to be responsible for the content sent by its users. So this judge's decision was exaggerated," he said.

On the floor of Congress, lawmakers expressed their frustration at the suspension.

The suspension appeared to affect WhatsApp users outside Brazil's borders, as hundreds of in Chile and Argentina took to social media on Thursday to complain that the messaging system was also interrupted in the two southern cone countries.

Chilean telecom provider VTR, owned by Liberty Global Inc, said it had re-established service to WhatsApp for its clients by using an "alternative international link." Earlier it said that difficulty in accessing the app "originated outside of Chile," without giving details.

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How much did Facebook pay to buy WhatsApp?

SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook Inc. closed its acquisition of mobile messaging service WhatsApp on Monday, with the final price tag rising an additional $3 billion to roughly $22 billion because of the increased value of Facebook's stock in recent months.

WhatsApp founder Jan Koum will receive nearly $2 billion in stock, vesting over a four-year period, as an inducement for him to stay with the company, according to a regulatory filing on Monday.

The acquisition, which Facebook announced in February and recently received regulatory approval in Europe, underscores the sky-rocketing values of fast-growing Internet startups, and the willingness of established players such as Facebook and Google Inc. to pay out for them.

WhatsApp, which has more than 600 million monthly users, is among a new crop of mobile messaging and social media apps that have become increasingly popular among younger users. Snapchat, a privately owned mobile app that allows users to swap photos that can disappear after a few seconds, is raising money at a $10 billion valuation, according to media reports.

Facebook paid $4.59 billion in cash and 178 million shares of its stock for WhatsApp, as well 46 million of grants in restricted stock units for WhatsApp employees that will vest over a four year period. At Monday's opening Facebook share price of $77.17, the deal translates to roughly $21.8 billion.

Koum, who will serve as WhatsApp Chief Executive and become a Facebook director, will earn a $1 annual salary, similar to Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg. Koum will receive 24.9 million Facebook restricted stock units, worth roughly $1.9 billion at Monday's share price.

WhatsApp, which has more than 70 employees, will continue to be based at its Mountain View, California, location.

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Facebook throws in towel on email

SAN FRANCISCO - Facebook, after unsuccessfully trying to get its users on its own email system, has thrown in the towel.

The social networking giant told AFP by email that it was giving up on email "because most people haven't been using their Facebook email address, and we can focus on improving our mobile messaging experience for everyone."

The company launched its email service in 2010, and in 2012 prompted an outcry by changing the default address for messages to users' Facebook addresses.

The project was seen as an attempt to be a "Gmail Killer," by getting members of the biggest social network to switch email accounts, but Facebook now admits it did not work.

"We're notifying people who use their @facebook.com email that the feature is changing," the company spokesman said.

"When someone sends you an email to your @facebook.com address, it will no longer go to your Messages on Facebook. Instead, the email will be forwarded to the primary email address on your account. (People have the option to turn forwarding off.)"

The news comes just days after Facebook announced a huge deal worth up to $19 billion in cash and stock for mobile messaging service WhatsApp.

The deal bolsters the world's biggest social network -- which has more than 1.2 billion members -- with the 450-million-strong WhatsApp, which will be operated independently with its own board.

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