March 28, 2024 at 04:15AM
MIT study finds 98% of students willing to share friends’ emails for free pizza, highlighting privacy paradox. Telegram’s new P2PL feature offers free premium membership in exchange for using users’ phone numbers for OTP relay. Users cautioned about privacy risks, spam, unwanted contacts. Meta accused of intercepting Snapchat traffic for user behavior analysis.
Key takeaways from the meeting notes:
1. Users’ willingness to trade privacy for incentives: Research findings from MIT in 2017 highlighted the privacy paradox, with a majority of students being willing to share private data, such as email addresses, in exchange for free pizza.
2. Telegram’s new feature: Telegram is testing a feature called Peer-to-Peer Login (P2PL), which offers some users a free premium membership in exchange for using their phone numbers as relays for sending one-time passwords (OTPs) to other users. This raises privacy concerns related to sharing phone numbers and potential misuse by recipients of OTPs.
3. Telegram’s privacy implications: Participants in the P2PL program may be liable for unwanted interactions or harm resulting from disclosing personal information about OTP recipients. Additionally, the honor system in place does not prevent users from contacting strangers whose numbers receive OTPs, potentially leading to increased spam calls and texts.
4. Privacy and security risks: With online services still heavily reliant on phone numbers for user authentication, it’s important to consider the potential privacy and security risks associated with participating in such experimental programs.
5. Meta’s data interception scheme: Court documents revealed that Meta (formerly Facebook) allegedly intercepted and decrypted network traffic from users of Snapchat, YouTube, and Amazon in a project called Ghostbusters. The tactic involved using custom apps from a VPN service called Onavo, which was acquired by Facebook in 2013. This raises legal and ethical concerns about user privacy and competitive advantage.
6. Responses from Meta: Meta denies any criminal or fraudulent activity, citing that its research did not cause any ad sales loss for Snapchat and questioning whether competitors collected similar information.
Overall, the meeting notes highlight the importance of privacy and the ethical considerations of using personal data for incentives, as well as the potential legal implications of data interception and privacy breaches by technology companies.