(NSFW) Is Whisper really respecting people’s privacy?

(written by lawrence krubner, however indented passages are often quotes). You can contact lawrence at: lawrence@krubner.com, or follow me on Twitter.

Gawker Media gets data straight from Whisper:

Uber and Lyft are doing everything they can to recruit new drivers. There’s cash and perks and a bevy of enticing benefits, but for whatever reason they’re not mentioning the massive amount of spontaneous sex drivers are having with riders. …If you’re thinking this is all just an elaborate hoax by a spate of sexually frustrated Whisper users, we did too – and then we talked to the company. Whisper was able to weed out the people that were simply starved for attention by using a combination of posting history and geolocation data.

Someone in the comments points out how worrisome this is:

So, Whisper, the secret sharing app can:

1) view posting history

2) geolocation data

3) Analyze the data for Gawker…

Interesting….

But as Nate Anderson says “Anonymized” data really isn’t“. Data can be anonymous or interesting but never both. And everyone who uses Whisper should be angry about the idea of them giving “anonymous” data to journalists.

As someone else says in the comments:

Anonymous? If you know the city a post is from… How many 22 year old male drivers does Uber / Lyft have in SF? And of those how many were active on the date that “tonight” was posted. Meta data can be identifying data if you take it far enough.

Post external references

  1. 1
    http://jalopnik.com/fucking-uber-and-lyft-drivers-is-apparently-a-thing-1612858479
  2. 2
    http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/09/your-secrets-live-online-in-databases-of-ruin/
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