Privacy experts on Friday called for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to examine social media app Whisper’s tracking of “anonymous users”.

The US consumer watchdog has broad powers to sanction companies it believes have breached their promises to consumers and has become increasingly interested in claims made by tech companies, sanctioning Facebook, Google and Snapchat in recent years.

On Thursday the Guardian revealed that Whisper, an app that promises to “anonymously share your thoughts and secrets”, is tracking its users including some who have asked not to be followed and storing their posts indefinitely while it trawls their messages to identify interesting stories to promote itself in the media.

“That’s exactly the kind of deceptive practice that the FTC should crack down on because consumers do rely on those representations,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which filed a complaint with the FTC last year asking it to investigate Snapchat.

“It’s very important but there has to be more transparency and accountability. Companies that offer anonymity services should deliver them,” he said.

Chris Calabrese, legislative counsel of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said: “There is no question that the FTC almost has to investigate. Beyond the fact that they seem to have violated the promises they make to users by telling them they can opt out of location and then tracking them, the entire way Whisper seems to be working behind the scenes to identify people is just so diametrically opposite to the promise of the site, which is anonymous, not identifiable speech. When the FTC sees something like that I don’t see how it can’t investigate it.”

Read the Full Article: Source – The Guardian
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/17/privacy-experts-whisper-tracking-users

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