Live data from Hacker News

Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

robertheaton.com

21–30 of 159 posts

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#21
post #16

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.

Nobody has to stop using WhatsApp, the scenario described in the article can be prevented simply by changing the app's privacy settings.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#22
post #14
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.

Honest question, isn't this what notifications and icon badges are for? It's easy to see if there's anything new without opening the app.

Related question, does WhatsApp send the heartbeat only when I open the app, or every x minutes as long as it has a network connection?

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#23
post #16

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.

It takes a real turn towards developer centered humor with the opening line "With even more time on your hands than ever before, you go just a bit mad and start...". Great Deus ex Machina type segue into all out yummy tech craziness he relishes out.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

There's another startup idea.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#25
post #21
post #16

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.

Nobody has to stop using WhatsApp, the scenario described in the article can be prevented simply by changing the app's privacy settings.

Wrong, if you deactivate the feature 'last seen at' it doesn't change anything because you can still get the same information with the feature 'is online now' and this feature can't be deactivated

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#26
post #21
post #16

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.

Nobody has to stop using WhatsApp, the scenario described in the article can be prevented simply by changing the app's privacy settings.

AFAIK, it will display that the user is online (i.e: the user is using the app) regardless of the privacy setting.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#27
post #22
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Honest question, isn't this what notifications and icon badges are for? It's easy to see if there's anything new without opening the app. Related question, does WhatsApp send the heartbeat only when I open the app, or every x minutes as long as it has a network connection?

Only if you go on the app

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#28
If you trust those """services""" to be secure and trust that they care about your privacy, then you will be betrayed sooner or later, in ways you can't think of -- just like in the article.

Fun fact, years ago I accidentally found out that my girlfriend at the time cheated on me on Snapchat, without me actually exploiting anything. She told me to join it with her, telling me that is going to be fun. Snapchat kept track of useds' activity and gamified it to incentivize you by scoring your activity then. Each person has a public activity score when you tap on their profile. One day, I noticed that her Snapchat had more than twice the score that I had. So I clicked on her profile and there it is some strange dude having a score higher than me, it turned out that was her """"ex"""" (I actually never asked her even for his name before, I found out only after that). I never consciously looked for anything, I trusted her 100%, the score was just there on my screen.

Thanks Snapchat for their stupid gamification efforts, otherwise I would have wasted more time on her. But since that accident, I never trust proprietary shit that has money to make, ads to sell, governments to please, and incentives to grow, even it says its selling point is to protect your privacy, like Snapchat. It's not about the "end to end encryption" or "finer privacy control" or "only allow when app is in foreground" or "restricted sharing" or "MIT open sauce license" or "export your data" or "only listening to hotwords" or "open APIs," it's about the intent. If the intent was to expand and make money, then all those techs won't be the magic pill that suddenly cures the ill intent. Anyway, privacy my ass, man.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#30
post #13
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.

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

Is this because of their still-utterly-broken roaming model? (supposedly to be remedied soon)
Post reply on HN