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Comment by dannyw | Hacker News Reader

There are active lawsuits going on by something like 49 out of 50 states. That's how damning evidence like this -- as well as Facebook offering to share unencrypted WhatsApp messages with Google (through the "backup to Drive" feature) -- came out to light.

Unfortunately a lot of HN readers are dismissing this or calling it partisan grandstanding, just because it's Texas that filed it.

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It is partisan because Oracle told us so. They have bragged that they ran a decade long well financed effort to make all these actions against Google happen, and what we see now is the culmination of that.

I don't doubt they "won" in the end, but I'm baffled that they brag about "competing" like that.

Here's some evidence...

Oracle for years secretly lobbied states, Justice Department to sue Google - Bloomberg (2020-12-23)

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-23/oracle-fo...

> Facebook offering to share unencrypted WhatsApp messages with Google

where can I read more on why they allowed this?

I haven't found any statements about it from either company, but here's a decent article: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/whatsapp-google-drive-back...

According to that article, they also snoop on the content of any files stored in Drive.

To think, just a decade ago, this article seemed paranoid, to the point where even the author seemed to think it was an oversight in the Terms of Service:

https://techland.time.com/2012/04/26/will-google-drive-snoop...

Interestingly, they give (gave?) themselves redistribution and performance rights for Drive contents at the same time. How long until they start openly using those rights, I wonder?

Where does the article say they snoop?

Drive is unencrypted because it is indexed for personal search. What is the snooping part?

> redistribution and performance rights for Drive

This is completely standard and required so that they can provide syncing and sharing.

It's written in your whatsapp backup settings.

I meant leaks or new information exposing how/why FB intentionally made backups unencrypted when storing on Google Drive.

I am aware that Whatsapp does this and have avoided Whatsapp’s Google Drive backup overall.

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