Pea Bee #3: Parasite, inverted
Hello all! This is issue #3 of this newsletter. I’ve been told that this email lands on the Promotions tab of Gmail for some of you. If so, please move this email to your inbox or add this email address to your contacts.
Whatsapp Privacy Policy update
A lot has already been said about WhatsApp's privacy policy update which they’ve now postponed to May 2021. Here are a couple of important things to know about this:
Facebook cannot access your messages
Whatsapp chats and photos still remain private. They are end-to-end encrypted so they cannot be accessed by Facebook. However, what they can access is your metadata. Information like - your phone number, usage logs, device IDs, IP address, mobile networks, etc.
“WhatsApp is great for protecting the privacy of your message content, but it feels like the privacy of everything else you do is up for grabs.”
Matthew Green, Johns Hopkins University cryptographer
You may already be sharing your data with Facebook
In 2016, WhatsApp sent out a user agreement update to inform you about their data-sharing with Facebook. At the time, WhatsApp gave one month to explicitly opt-out of data-sharing. If you missed it, then WhatsApp already shares your metadata with Facebook.
In case you want to check if you opted out of data sharing or not (which is now no longer a choice), you can do this on your Whatsapp:
Go to Settings > Account > Request your info
They will send you a report within 3 days that has a copy of your data. I checked my report, and I had not opted out of data-sharing in 2016. My WhatsApp metadata has been going to Facebook for years and now I can’t even opt-out of it.
https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-facebook-data-share-notification/
A project I wish I had created
Someone created a physical pull chain that immediately ends your video call to avoid awkwardness. This is brilliant and I really neeeeed this!
Today I Learned
Water is transparent to the human eye because of evolution and not because of water’s chemistry.
As Brian Skinner wrote in this tweet:
“Water is essentially opaque to all light except a narrow band of wavelengths that happen to correspond to the ones used by our eyes.”
Reviewing Amazon reviewers
If I find a review on Amazon really funny or stupid, I visit their Amazon profile and stalk their past reviews and purchases. It sounds so perverse that a stranger on the internet can peek into the daily lives of these unaware people through their Amazon purchases. Sometimes I am outright judging them for their taste in things. Other times, if I find their profile amusing enough, I follow them. I have to say I’ve discovered some “unique” products from this feed.
If this has creeped you out a little bit and if you don’t want a rando on the internet to lurk into your purchases you should set your amazon profile to be private. The settings are somewhat buried inside your Amazon accounts page but this is how you can do it -
Click on "Accounts & Lists"
Under "Ordering and shipping preferences," select "Profile"
Click on “Edit your public profile”
Select “Edit privacy settings”
Select “Hide all activity on your public profile”
Related - A few months ago, someone created a cool parody and a mildly dystopian dating website modeled after amazon - https://amazondating.co/
Parasite, inverted?
A picture of Vijay Mallya’s abandoned mansion on top of a high rise in Bangalore. I really, really want someone to make a desi alternate and inverted re-make of Parasite movie on this.
India win the Border-Gavaskar Trophy
A lot of test cricket highbrows have already waxed over-the-top lyricals about the wonders of test cricket in the past few days. So I am going to spare you all that but it has to be said that when there is a pay off at the end of a hard-fought 5-day test match of a 4-match test series - it is a pure joy unmatched by any other sport that I watch.
It only takes an out-of-context or an offhanded mention of the word cricket from anyone in my vicinity and I will spit out the tale of how I was there in all my flesh and blood to see the day 5 of one of the greatest test matches ever played - the India vs Aus Calcutta test match in 2001 (often with a horrible smug on my face, I’ve been told).
In spite of my obvious bias here, I think this test match, and this series, ranks above that iconic 2001 test series for me.
Thank you for reading! In the previous issue, I did a personal round-up of the year 2020. ICYMI, you can read it here - https://peabee.substack.com/p/pea-bee-2-were-here-because-were
As always, you can reply to this email or reach out to me on Twitter or Instagram DM for feedback.