Whisper Lashes Out Over "Vicious Lies" About User Tracking

With every information breach that happens involving government surveillance, one thing become increasingly clear: privacy is often an illusion, at least when it comes to your digital life. Whisper is one app that operates under that privacy illusion, at least according to The Guardian, which posted a large piece today calling out the company for what it says are numerous privacy violations, including handing information over to the government and tracking some users. Now Whisper has fired back, lashing out at The Guardian and calling the claims "vicious lies".

Whisper, for those unfamiliar, is an app that allows mobile users to post any small statement or thought anonymously, adding a picture if they'd like. The appeal of the service is that anyone can say anything, and as far as they've been told, no information is tracked or retained.

The report from The Guardian says that such privacy is not real, and that Whisper tracks users even if they specify that they don't want to be tracked, that it keeps track of users who are "newsworthy" for whatever reason, and that it even provides what information it has to other entities at times, including the government.

Said Whisper's Neetzan Zimmerman following the report, "First response: The Guardian's piece is lousy with falsehoods, and we will be debunking them all. Much more to come." When approached by the Washington Post, Zimmerman denied the claims, saying The Guardian was tying to "scare away our users."

SOURCE: The Washington Post