PrivacySocial media firms pledging to keep users anonymous still collect users’ information
Social media firm Whisperprides itself on offering anonymity in a market where the biggest players are often considered too transparent. Its co-founder, Michael Heyward, a tech entrepreneur, describes the company as “the first completely anonymous social network,” an alternative to Facebookand Twitter. It now emerges that Whisper’s back-end systems that retain digital libraries of texts and photographs sent by users, and in some cases the location information of users.
Social media firm Whisper prides itself on offering anonymity in a market where the biggest players are often considered too transparent. Its co-founder, Michael Heyward, a tech entrepreneur, describes the company as “the first completely anonymous social network,” an alternative to Facebook and Twitter, where users self-censor for fear of being judged by peers. A significant portion of the content on Whisper can be categorized as hate speech, criminal, and pornography, and users continue to share their thoughts through the mobile app under the belief that all messages are untraceable.
“Whisper does not collect nor store any personal identifiable information from users therefore their privacy and anonymity are always protected,” the company said in a statement to the Guardian.
The newspaper says, however, that Whisper rewrote its terms of service and introduced a new privacy policy a few days after the Guardian notified Whisper that it would publish findings on Whisper’s internal practices.
Whisper had given the Guardian access to the company’s back-end system and staff during a three-day visit to discuss a partnership. During the visit, Guardian officials discovered digital libraries of texts and photographs, and in some cases the location information of their authors. Whisper’s back-end software program can pinpoint a user’s location within a 500 meter radius, the Guardian notes. During a tour of Whisper’s Venice Beach office, the Guardian found records of postings from the White House, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the U.S. naval facility on Diego Garcia, the National Security Agency, and the CIA headquarters. Whisper stresses that it does not gather information which immediately identifies a user, but geographical information collected over time leaves a digital trail that can be used to map a user’s true identity.
While Whisper does allow users to deactivate the app’s geolocation service, the rough location of those users can be retrieved at a later time by Whisper staffers. Roughly 20 percent of users have disabled Whisper’s geolocation service, according to the Guardian. Industry analysts say Whisper’s access to user location will allow it to better offer curated content and advertising, but critics believe the means by which those offerings are made available contradict Whisper’s avowed commitment to user anonymity.
