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.
Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp
81–90 of 159 posts
Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp
#82Nevermind the clever writing but the issue has been known for years—and beautifully exploited with the selfhostable ready-made solution WhatsSpy Public since Feb 2015: https://gitlab.maikel.pro/maikeldus/WhatsSpy-Public/ It's not actively maintained anymore but Maikel deserves some credit for it.
Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
> * SMS don't have read receipt. Yes, they do. iPhones don't seem to do that, but old GSM phones did it (like my first phone, Ericsson T20, which got released in 2000). Androids have read reports in the default message app, if I'm not mistaken.
No, they don't. The protocol supports delivery report only. And the meaning of that report isn't necessarily what you believe or wish it to be: ...the exact meaning of confirmations varies from reaching the network, to being queued for sending, to being sent, to receiving a confirmation of receipt from the target device...( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS )
Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, they don't. The protocol supports delivery report only. And the meaning of that report isn't necessarily what you believe or wish it to be: ...the exact meaning of confirmations varies from reaching the network, to being queued for sending, to being sent, to receiving a confirmation of receipt from the target device...( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS )
Whatsapp doesn't have a read receipt either. Just because the message was displayed, doesn't mean it was read.
Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
* SMS delivery isn't guaranteed. * SMS don't have read receipt. * SMS depends on cellular connectivity. * SMS and MMS have very limited media transfer support. * SMS don't have feature similar to groups.
> * SMS don't have read receipt. Yes, they do. iPhones don't seem to do that, but old GSM phones did it (like my first phone, Ericsson T20, which got released in 2000). Androids have read reports in the default message app, if I'm not mistaken.
Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, they don't. The protocol supports delivery report only. And the meaning of that report isn't necessarily what you believe or wish it to be: ...the exact meaning of confirmations varies from reaching the network, to being queued for sending, to being sent, to receiving a confirmation of receipt from the target device...( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS )
Whatsapp doesn't have a read receipt either. Just because the message was displayed, doesn't mean it was read.
Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp
#87A 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,…
This isn’t just necessarily a problem with WhatsApp. The same applies to IRC, if you set away states. Even if you don’t set away states, one can simply monitor every channel you’re in, every message you send, and then quickly determine what timezone you’re in, when you sleep, when you’re on vacation, etc. Here’s an example graph of a user, every dot is a message: https://i.imgur.com/DrgVvVw.png and here one from a us…
Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp
#88A 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,…
The main objective, however, was not to stalk innocent users but to catch an anonymous IRC troll who was using an identless shell server in order to hide their real account name. Every time the troll wrote to IRC, the activity logger program showed typing activity from a certain user. After a few message exchanges during quiet night hours I was able to reliably pinpoint them.
Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp
#89Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep. It was called Snapchat score or something. It had a list of top 3 people or so and how much score they had with each other. It was unreal. This was back in spring-summer 2015.
Now it shows you the live current location of all your friends, no one I know has it turned off. Wth people?
Found it to be on "ghost mode (only me)." I never touched this setting before.