Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

robertheaton.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 159 posts

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#11

Post by polote »

koolba wrote: post #8
polote wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, whatsapp is not like Tinder or Facebook you don't open it every 2 minutes to check if there is something new.

Do you really check Tinder for new "content" every two minutes?

> The company said that, on average, people log into the app 11 times a day

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/fashion/tinder-the-fast-g...

But yes not every 2 minutes

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#13

Post by raarts »

polote wrote: post #5
Havoc wrote: post #2

I suspect a fairly small percentage of users is active enough that you get usable hourly data.

I agree with you, whatsapp is not like Tinder or Facebook you don't open it every 2 minutes to check if there is something new.

That depends on the country. In the US, people still tend to text a lot, but in most of Europe, Whatsapp totally replaced texting.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#14

Post by yoavm »

Havoc wrote: post #2

I suspect a fairly small percentage of users is active enough that you get usable hourly data.

I guess it really depends where. I believe here, where WhatsApp is pretty much the _only_ method of communication, people most definitely check it every few minutes, and especially before they go to bed.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#15

Post by carroccio »

youeeeeeediot wrote: post #4

Always wondered what would happen if someone was to happen to have every valid US/CAN number in their contact list (all 3-4 billion), since WhatsApp doesn't validate you actually know the contact just that you have their phone number.

They ban your IP. Anyway with some effort you can deanonimize a lot of numbers (eg: status/name/profile photo).

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#16

Post by squigg »

I loved this article. It is beautifully written, given both the hacking curiosity on display as well as the real-world privacy impact it demonstrates. Most of my family use whats-app and would be mortified if they actually understood most of this. Not saying they would stop using it, as the trade-off is a great social app, but it would make them think more broadly about how the world is changing.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#17

Post by option_greek »

Of course, the elephant in the room is that all this info and much more is with WhatsApp, Facebook, Google and what ever garbage app is installed on your phone. I agree that the article is more about targeted surveillance towards certain users but that is where NSA and secret letters come in :).

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#19

Post by thedaniel »

Havoc wrote: post #2

I suspect a fairly small percentage of users is active enough that you get usable hourly data.

I suspect the opposite - given that whatsapp dominates texting in europe, and twice as many people live in europe as the USA (which is upon what i suspect you base your assumption here)

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#20

Post by CommentCard »

carroccio wrote: post #15
youeeeeeediot wrote: post #4

Always wondered what would happen if someone was to happen to have every valid US/CAN number in their contact list (all 3-4 billion), since WhatsApp doesn't validate you actually know the contact just that you have their phone number.

They ban your IP. Anyway with some effort you can deanonimize a lot of numbers (eg: status/name/profile photo).

Is there a known upper limit on the number of #s one account can have?

I suppose you could use that limit to set up enough WhatsApp accounts on proxies to effectively have access to all registered #s?

Post reply on HN