Privacy Allegations Trouble Internet's 'Safest Place'

Social media app Whisper has reportedly suspended a number of employees pending an investigation into claims of unauthorised tracking of users' behaviour.

Earlier in October the UK's Guardian newspaper reported after a visit to the firm that employees there had offered to share user information with it - leading to an angry retort from Whisper's Editor-in-Chief Neetzan Zimmerman, and last week to a letter from concerned Senator and privacy advocate John 'Jay' Rockefeller, who is Chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

In particular, the Guardian said Whisper was 'tracking the location of its users, including some who have specifically asked not to be followed', was 'sharing information with the US Department of Defense gleaned from smartphones it knows are used from military bases', and had a tool which enabled it to 'pinpoint messages to within 500 meters of where they were sent'.

The company, whose app allows users to post anonymously to social media and which is billed as 'the safest place on the Internet', is now conducting its own internal investigation into the claims made during the Guardian visit. The executives concerned have strongly denied the allegations, and Zimmerman tweeted last week that the Guardian would 'regret' the story. Whisper co-founder and CEO Michael Heyward has since indicated that he possibly regrets the tone of this tweet, commenting: 'Neetzan's reaction to the Guardian allegations has taken away from the substance of the issue, which is that much of the Guardian's reporting on this issue has been highly misleading or just plain wrong.' He added in a statement: 'we strive to do right by all our users, and we continue to look into the unattributed quotes in the Guardian's stories.'

Rockefeller's letter to Heyward suggested that: 'It is questionable, at best, whether users seeking to post anonymously on the 'safest place on the Internet' would expect that WhisperText has information-sharing relationships with third parties such as media organizations'. Heyward in a blog post has asserted that Whisper does not actively track users, or collect names, email addresses or other personally identifiable information from users; does not collect GPS information from users unless they opt in - and if they choose to do so, still randomizes the data to help maintain anonymity. However it does collect IP addresses from users, and use anonymous data to 'glean important insights about our world'.

Web site: www.whisper.sh .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.