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Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

robertheaton.com

51–60 of 159 posts

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#51
post #5
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's a per-country thing. There are countries where Whatsapp is the de-facto standard for passing information.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#53
post #34

A few weeks ago there was a similar discussion, and I commented the following: If you think there is no problem, you are wrong. The blog post does not show all the information leaks that this implies. Example: I can modify the script to monitor all the numbers I've in my phone, so that based on the online/offline status in a few weeks I can be able to guess who is having conversations together, discovering cheatings,…

A similar indirect way can be used to extract information out of Google's database. For example, launch an ad-campaign for any product, directed at people who love cats. Now if people click on the ad and buy the product, you know they must love cats.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#56
post #30
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

It's also because it's much easier sending photos and live recordings using whatsapp compared to any other app outhere (FB is too clunky, the rest of the apps don't have a critical mass in most of Europe.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#58

Nice and very well written article,most of my friends use whatsapp and would be mortified if they actually understood most of this.

Even without, unfortunately (I'm sure they are wonderful), knowing your friends, I bet you a cookie that they don't care.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#59
post #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 tr…

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