Viber 2.0 finalmente con i messaggi gratutiti

@Michele

You are very sarcastic and defensive, instead of reading the real meaning behind what we are trying to explain to you, and that’s a shame :)

Let me summarize: we never denied that we have your information, we just made the following points:

1. We are merely copying an existing model of use of other extremely popular communication services. If only, we made it stricter. If you agree with them or not – that’s your choice. We go with what the public wants and agrees to nowadays.
2. I never claimed that it is *your* fault that your information is in our secure servers without your clear consent. I only explained that in today’s internet world, every click of a mouse (even by you) sends information that could be not only your friends’, without their absolutely clear consent as well. Unlike others, we have gone a step further and committed not to sell or abuse this information.
Thus, a user is expected to read a privacy policy before he registers to any service. If anything, it is essentially “your friend’s” fault.
3. Lastly, do you think cellular companies don’t have this information from your friend even before we did? The problem is not only “before our Privacy Policy. Following your logic, the problem is even before Viber. It is in the fact that your friend has your phone number saved in his mobile phone.

Viber.

Michele VS Viber …. the saga continues :D

Thansk again for your answer. I promise :-) it is my last message. just wanted to underline what I understood from your answer:
1. Everybody (google, facebook, etc) collect data, so we do. If they can… we can. (and on this point I fully agree with you)
2. If we have your data because a friend of you gave them to us (subscribing Viber), even if you do not agree with that… it is your problem, not our, since your friend and everybody are using google, facebook etc… so it MUST be fine that we have also your informations.

Well, it is clear and let me conclude that if your Privacy Policy is fine (but again I am not interested in you PP, the problem is before that) your concept of “consent” is …ehm.. pretty wide since as a result of this debate YOU have MY data because A FRIEND (using Facebook and google) installed YOUR Software, this implies I gave YOU consent to have MY data in your server.

you should, at least, admit this is not the “standard” way of giving someone consent to treat personal data. but I am afraid you’ll not admit that.

Anyway, now it is clear and I thank you again of taking time to follow my “paranoic approach”.

Michele,

We fully understand your concern, and appreciate the fact that you took your time to explain it to us.

Let’s start from the beginning: Cyprus is a full member of the EU. To be frank, we also have representations in other countries, including the USA. This should not make any difference to our debate.

About your consent for having your information stored in our servers – first, Viber is not different from any other popular communications app today, let alone major search engines. This includes Facebook, Google, Skype, etc. All of these app collect data about you daily, some anonymous, some not. Are we going to stop looking for websites through Google? Has the world stopped using Facebook?

Yes, Viber does retrieve ONLY your phone number+name from a friend of yours who registered, but this information is used for one thing, and one thing *ONLY* – and that’s making sure he is notified when you install Viber (or already installed). Viber’s motto is simplicity, and this is the only way for it to be implemented. I would like to emphasize again that our Privacy Policy states these conditions very clearly. We are glad you read it and think it is “the best in the world”, but installing Viber, a user agrees that this information be sent to our servers, and used *ONLY* for functional reasons, with no manual access to it by our workers (essentially making it completely invisible).

Lastly, you forgot to mention the fact that if anyone feels uncomfortable with the action of giving his info to Viber’s server (without their clear consent), that could easily deactivate their or their friend’s account through Viber itself. This action instantly deletes all information of a user’s addressbook.

To conclude – there is consent. If you are angry with a friend who installed Viber and “gave away” your information, ask him why he agreed to our (very strict) privacy policy, why he uses Facebook, why he uses Google, etc.

If anything else is unclear, please feel free to reply.

Regards,
Viber.

Dear Viber,
thanks for your answer. I appreciate. Please note that I am not saying your Privacy Policy is not transparent. I am saying that I am not interested in Viber, I didn’t download it and dispite this my PERSONAL DATA such as phone number and name are (without my consent) in your server just because a friend has installed VIBER. And they (my personal data) should be an asset of a company based in Cyprus.
Again your Privacy Policy could be the best in the world… no, let me say IT IS THE BEST IN THE WORLD… I don’t care, I simply dislike that my details are in your servers without my consent even if you are not using them, even if you are the best company and even if you are fantastic. This should be in my rights… dispite what VIBER wrote. Any comments to my concern are welcome!

Vorrei rispondere a queste accuse imprecise, ma lo farò in inglese purtroppo, perché il mio italiano non è così buono:

Regarding the fact we collect users’ information. First, it is important to be accurate – we only collect names and phone numbers, nothing else. Naturally, we collect users’ information not because we are curious of its content, but in order for functional reasons, and for us to enable the service we, as a company, promise to provide. Without that information, Viber cannot function. This is not different from any other major social network/communication service provider in our world nowadays.
Why do we maintain call logs? in order to better understand and maintain our system. For example, we had a bug causing some calls to drop after 10 seconds. We discovered it by analyzing call logs and seeing that we had a disproportionate number of 10 second calls (we fixed most of it in Viber 1.0.5 and Viber 1.1 will have a complete solution for this). If it weren’t for call logs we wouldn’t have known about this issue. Imagine if we had issues related to certain operators, countries, phone versions, software versions, connectivity type (say, a 3G issue) – without logs, we can’t find out about these issues. Those logs, of course, and completely anonymous, and can be accessed by a few of our technical personnel. That’s it.

I would like to clarify again: we DO NOT sell users’ information to anyone, and we keep this information WELL locked in our servers, with extremely limited access to it. The line in our Privacy Policy that refers to giving the information third parties does not mean that we sell it. sometimes it is necessary to pass to one or two companies in order, for example, to send an SMS with activation code (again – functional reasons).
In our contracts with those companies, we make sure the information we send it deleted immediately after its functional use.

Despite what Michele wrote here, Viber’s privacy policy is one of the most transparent, clear and secure policies in the world of internet communications today. Please read our privacy policy and compare it with others before you make such accusations.

Regards,
Viber.

1. Viber, si ciuccia tutta la vostra rubrica: nomi, numeri telefonici (anche il PIN della banca se qualcuno lo ha salvato in rubrica) e c’è scritto espressamente che diventano un ASSET AZIENDALE.
2. si prende tutti i dati dal vostro telefonino anche senza consenso del proprietario di quei dati (i vostri amici, colleghi etc).
3. se disinstallate l’applicazione i log di tutte le telefonate rimangono nei server di Viber e per cancellarli bisogna passare tramite ufficio tecnico.
4. è GRATIS, nessuna tariffazione, nessuna ADV, NIENTE. e a domanda su come pensano di guadagnare dicono che non rivelano il loro business plan, vedi raymondpoort.com (però intanto ti dicono che i tuoi dati personali sono un LORO asset aziendale).
5. secondo la legge italiana, e non solo, potreste anche beccarvi una denuncia da un vostro contatto per aver dato a terzi i suoi dati personali (e averli fatti diventare ASSET di una azienda con sede in Cypro) SENZA IL SUO CONSENSO.

…FOLLIA… non sono un amante di skype, ma almeno mi sembrano di gran lunga più onesti. mio consiglio… alla larga da VIBER.

Hello,
This is a member of the Viber Development Team!
Thank you for your review of Viber. we are very happy that so many people in Italy are interested in our application.

We fixed the problem and submitted the fixed version of Viber 2.0 to Apple, and it should appear in AppStore soon.
Once it’s available, download it and the problem will be fixed.

Grazie,
Viber.