WhatsApp raising minimum age to 16 in EU

[Sk00p]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43888647

Oh my kids will be pleased!

Told them to start moving over to Signal instead.

[Camelot1971]

Every kid will just say they are 16 (or any random age) - I expect that's what they do now anyway.

[Sk00p]

That's what my 13 year old said

[devnull]

01/01/1900 FTW.

[snuffy]

devnull said:

01/01/1900 FTW.

I use that all the time and no website seems to notice that makes me 118 !

[Kermit power]

Farcical, isn't it!

All so that WhatsApp can reassure politicians that they've now closed the stable door, and never mind that the horse has bolted!

[The_Jackal]

For every child that lies about their age, there is a creep lying that he is child too.
Unless you require a passport to use these apps you cant protect the kids from themselves just by a stupid checkbox that means nothing.

Surely Google et al can use their "algorithms" to spot paedo grooming talk, and flag them up or instaban. I'm sure the police could provide list of keywords and phrases, like they do when scanning the phone calls and emails.

Edited by The_Jackal on Wednesday 25th April 22:10

[Sk00p]

The_Jackal said:

For every child that lies about their age, there is a creep lying that he is child too.
Unless you require a passport to use these apps you cant protect the kids from themselves just by a stupid checkbox that means nothing.

Surely Google et al can use their "algorithms" to spot paedo grooming talk, and flag them up or instaban. I'm sure the police could provide list of keywords and phrases, like they do when scanning the phone calls and emails.

Edited by The_Jackal on Wednesday 25th April 22:10

That's the thing with end to end encryption. The likes of whatsapp can tell who you have messaged/called, when and often where from but not what's in the message. Reason why Telegram is being kicked out of Russia as they won't give the government a back door.

[feef]

Sk00p said:

The_Jackal said:

For every child that lies about their age, there is a creep lying that he is child too.
Unless you require a passport to use these apps you cant protect the kids from themselves just by a stupid checkbox that means nothing.

Surely Google et al can use their "algorithms" to spot paedo grooming talk, and flag them up or instaban. I'm sure the police could provide list of keywords and phrases, like they do when scanning the phone calls and emails.

Edited by The_Jackal on Wednesday 25th April 22:10

That's the thing with end to end encryption. The likes of whatsapp can tell who you have messaged/called, when and often where from but not what's in the message. Reason why Telegram is being kicked out of Russia as they won't give the government a back door.

I think it would be possible to build a profile of ‘likely’ candidates with only that info, however.

One would expect that there would normally be mutual contacts among friends and those contacts would be visible. Therefore a user which has many one to one contacts with young people but no mutual contacts with those same people.

If a user, therefore, only has one to one contacts with users of a certain age group and no mutual contacts within that same group, then it could flag for more monitoring.

It’s an oversimplification, but it’s these sorts of relationship indicators that graph engines can use to calculate the links. It’s the sort of technology that was used to analyse the Panama Papers.