Companies like Google, Facebook and Twitter are banned in mainland China. Whisper is developing a Chinese version of its app, which received a soft-launch earlier this month.Whisper stressed that “specific user data” is not being shared with the DoD, adding that the company was “proudly working with many organisations to lower suicide rates and the US military is among them”.
The trend toward anonymity in social media has some privacy experts concerned about security.Īpproached for comment last week, Whisper said it “does not follow or track users”. Facebook is reportedly developing its own Whisper-style app for anonymous publishing. The US version of the app, which enables users to publish short messages superimposed over photographs or other images, has attracted millions of users, and is proving especially popular among military personnel who are using the service to make confessions they would be unlikely to publish on Facebook or Twitter.Ĭurrently, users of Whisper are publishing as many as 2.6m messages a day. Whisper is also sharing information with the US Department of Defense gleaned from smartphones it knows are used from military bases, and developing a version of its app to conform with Chinese censorship laws.
The practice of monitoring the whereabouts of Whisper users – including those who have expressly opted out of geolocation services – will alarm users, who are encouraged to disclose intimate details about their private and professional lives. StackExchange.The company behind Whisper, the social media app that promises users anonymity and claims to be “the safest place on the internet”, is tracking the location of its users, including some who have specifically asked not to be followed.