• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, March 13, 2015

Last year the social media universe was set all aTwitter by a series of articles from The Guardian U.S., accusing anonymous social media site Whisper of a number of misdeeds -- including tracking the location of users who had opted out of location-tracking, sharing information about users with the Department of Defense, and then hastily rewriting its own terms of service when it learned what The Guardian was reporting.

Now, however, The Guardian has issued a lengthy correction and clarification regarding one article and entirely retracted one opinion piece based on the reporting. Although some of its central allegations apparently stand, since I covered the original contretemps and immediate aftermath it is only fair to cover these subsequent developments, which seem to absolve Whisper, at least in part.

The main correction and clarification -- which could be viewed in effect as a retraction -- concerned the article “Whisper app rewrites terms of service and privacy policy,” which as noted above alleged that Whisper had revamped its privacy promises to users to basically bring them in line, “ex post facto,” with the behavior detailed in The Guardian article. 

Significantly, the Federal Trade Commission has warned that it considers sudden, unannounced changes to privacy policies to be a red flag for wrongdoing, meaning there were real legal and regulatory ramifications to this accusation. However, The Guardian now concedes that these changes were already in the works some months before the articles were published.

The Guardian has also retracted a commentary: “Think you can Whisper privately? Think again,” based on the allegation that Whisper is tracking the location of users even when they opted out. Whisper claims it has only ever tracked the location of users against their will when required to by industry standards and laws, for example because their posts mentioned suicide or criminal activity. This includes times it shared information about service members with the DoD. 

The Guardian also clarified that Whisper’s technique for determining the location of users who opted out, by checking their IP address, is “rough and usually unreliable.”

However, The Guardian says it stands by the bulk of the reporting in the articles, including an anecdote about Whisper following the location of a Washington lobbyist who detailed his sexual escapades on the site (apparently having opted into location sharing). The Guardian also let stand a quote from one Whisper exec to the effect that “He’s a guy that we’ll track for the rest of his life and he’ll have no idea we’ll be watching him.”