Twisted world of data: Trojans, separation, transparency

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Our weekly sampler briefing for t3n pros today deals with all kinds of peculiarities in the state’s handling of data, news from Telegram, a surprise from Instagram and Apple’s strategy.

Data protection is a topic that people in this country like to peddle and want to make everyone believe that we have things under control here so that we should urgently look at it elsewhere. And indeed: the privacy advocates are extremely zealous fellows that nobody likes to get in the way. This is why politicians, for example, decide in favor of data protection when using a corona warning app and against the consistent fight against pandemics. That is why schoolchildren are faced with working solutions for the digitization of their lessons and, for many peculiar reasons, have to use even more peculiar hand-knitted software imitations.

It is all the more astonishing that all the vocal data protection fans were suddenly very quiet when things really got down to business this week. The state Trojan was pushed over the ramp for the federal police and all 19 intelligence services in Germany. A piece of software that is about as trustworthy in terms of data protection as a Labrador is guarding a Vienna sausage. In a country that has a lot of catching up to do in terms of digitization, of course, additional uncertainty is particularly beneficial. Not. Bitkom commented on this in a somewhat friendlier, but unmistakable manner: “The security and trustworthiness of telecommunications networks and services are valuable assets and must not be undermined.” In addition: the state Trojan is also potentially the vanguard for illegal relatives. In both cases, developers aggressively exploit known (but not yet fixed) or newly discovered vulnerabilities. To put it somewhat simply, the state trojan jeopardizes the IT security of all people who never have anything to do with the program itself. Data protection works somehow differently.

We do not know whether any government services are already reading the phone of the conspiracy ideologist Attila Hildmann, who is now completely off track. But what we do know: Hildmann’s crude messages, at least at the moment, no longer reach Telegram users (if they have their app from the iOS or Playstore). The channel is locked. You don’t have to be sad about that. But probably about how the topic was dealt with in the media. The Hildmann fairy tale that Google and Apple would have blocked it was simply taken over. But that would be really worrying – regardless of who is affected. But it’s not like that. Rather, the two store operators pointed out to the messenger provider directly that Attila’s pile of letters did not really want to get along with the respective house rules. Telegram had to fear that it would be completely thrown out of the stores and therefore made a cut at Hildmann’s. Officially, nobody really wants to comment on this. Transparency is written quite small at this point.

Meanwhile, Instagram provided a positive surprise in terms of transparency over the course of the week. A Blog post deals with the legendary algorithm and explains how content is ranked, displayed and moderated on Facebook’s own platform. But that’s not all: In the future, changes and new functions that influence how content of each individual person is displayed on Instagram will be communicated more proactively and transparently, Instagram promises. In fact, he explains Blog post very extensive, how the ranking works for feed, stories and reels. Of course, this is not really verifiable. Still, this kind of openness is astonishing.

Apple opens up – at least somehow

Speaking of openness. Apple caused wide eyes at the WWDC at the beginning of last week when it was announced that Facetime and Siri will also be allowed to play in other places in the future. On closer inspection, however, it turns out that the members of the Apple team are at most guest players in other teams. The bottom line remains: Apple’s core strategy remains the same. It’s about control in your own ecosystem and your own product. If we’re honest, it all works out damn well.