Live data from Hacker News

Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

robertheaton.com

81–90 of 159 posts

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#81
post #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.

It sort of reminds me of gonzo-style journalism. I took a look at their other articles, well some of them, and like their style. I'm not sure if it would appeal to a larger audience, but I liked it.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#82
post #50

Nevermind 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.

Wanted to post the same. Note that this project used an own client, instead of scraping the webinterface. Which is by far superior, because you don't need an active charged phone and can scale much better. yowsup is still around and working.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#83
post #77
post #73

Earlier 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 )

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

#84
post #83
post #77

Earlier 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.

Nor does it test the recipient understanding of the content. But that's missing the point. The app lets you know that your message delivered to the recipient and then lets you know that it was opened (not merely viewed as a notification). This is a useful feature that SMS lacks.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#85
post #73
post #64

Earlier 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.

[deleted]

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#86
post #83
post #77

Earlier 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.

You are mistaken. They do make a distinction between actually read and just delivered.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#87
post #76
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,…

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…

Yikes, that second person is almost robotic in their sleep patterns.

Re: Tracking friends and strangers using WhatsApp

#88
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,…

Once I hacked together a similar program to log the terminal activity of fellow students on the university UNIX and Linux servers: https://github.com/andyn/actspy/blob/master/actspy.c

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

#90
post #38

Earlier 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?

This setting doesn't seem to be enabled by default, at least on Android. I just scrolled into settings > Who can... See My Location >

Found it to be on "ghost mode (only me)." I never touched this setting before.

Post reply on HN