• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, October 17, 2014

It’s always nice to wrap up the week on a note of fierce controversy and recrimination, don’t you think? Luckily the social media industry provides plenty of both. In the latest round, The Guardian has stirred a PR hornets’ nest with a series of articles purporting to show that Whisper, the supposedly anonymous platform for sharing secrets, is secretly tracking the locations of many users, including people who explicitly asked not to be tracked.

Among other things, on Thursday The Guardian reported that Whisper is using a mapping tool to gather location data on users who use the app’s geolocation function. Even worse, The Guardians reported that Whisper also figured out the rough location of people who hadn’t opted into the geolocation function, via their IP data. The Guardian also alleged a number of other questionable activities, including sharing information with the U.S. military, the FBI, and British intelligence service MI5, and storing data outside the U.S., for example in the Philippines.

But the main kerfluffle is about the location tracking. Damningly, The Guardian claims that two of its reporters “witnessed this practice on a three-day visit to the company’s Los Angeles headquarters last month, as part of a trip to explore the possibility of an expanded journalistic relationship with Whisper.” For users who opted into the geolocation tracking feature, the Guardian adds: “A team headed by Whisper’s editor-in-chief, Neetzan Zimmerman, is closely monitoring users it believes are potentially newsworthy, delving into the history of their activity on the app and tracking their movements through the mapping tool. Among the many users currently being targeted are military personnel and individuals claiming to work at Yahoo, Disney and on Capitol Hill.”

Needless to say these accusations are extremely damaging, and if true could present some legal problems for Whisper. No surprise, the social app has denied them vehemently, with Whisper editor-in-chief Neetzan Zimmerman tweeting that “The Guardian is lying. Full stop,” adding, “The Guardian made a mistake posting that story and they will regret it.”

In good online controversy fashion, the Guardian has fired back with a rebuttal of Whisper’s rebuttal, alleging that Whisper quickly changed its terms of service when it learned that The Guardian was about to publish these accusations. According to The Guardian, Whisper’s terms of service didn’t previously tell users it might determine their location based on IP data, but now they do -- essentially an attempt at retroactive “CYA.”

And still it goes on: Whisper’s chief technology officer Chad DePue fired back, writing on Hacker News that “The Guardian’s reporting that we changed our terms of service in response to the article is beyond silly.” DePue says the changes to the terms of service were in the works for a long time, and even offered to share a screenshot of his online talks with lawyers on this topic dating back to July.

So exactly where does all this back-and-forth, he-said-she-said leave us? If you’re like me, even more paranoid than before.