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Reporting a user to WhatsApp forwards a copy of recent messages from that chat

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Re: Reporting a user to WhatsApp forwards a copy of recent messages from that chat

#31

Post by ffpip »

pw6hv wrote: post #28
keyme wrote: post #16

Just FYI, the Google Drive backup of your "E2E encrypted" whatsapp messages is stored in plain text... https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/about-google-drive-ba...

So it is not only Facebook that has complete access to the message history, but also Google. The funny thing is that I cannot find a way to access that backup myself, is anyone aware of a method to download that backup as a data dump and inspect it?

I don't know if it is included in your Google takeout.

98% of users enable that option. The fact that whatsapp is e2ee is a complete lie.

Use Signal for true e2ee, or if you don't like it, Telegram. Telegram stores everything in the cloud tho. (they haven't disclosed any private messages, and are much more trustworthy than Whatsapp). They just wanted to back up messages without giving it to Google/Apple

Re: Reporting a user to WhatsApp forwards a copy of recent messages from that chat

#32

Post by _eqet »

eldridgea wrote: post #29
st1x7 wrote: post #11

As if they couldn't read everything anyway. Obviously, I have no evidence for making such a claim. What I know is 1. Facebook's reputation with regards to privacy. 2. The fact that they paid 20 billion dollars to buy a product without a monetization model. (Which is 20 times more than they paid for Instagram by the way.) 3. Whatsapp's founder left the company after the acquisition due to privacy concerns. It's enough…

While I share your general suspicion I don't think they need to see the messages to get a lot of privacy-violating use out of WhatsApp. When the NSA was talking about metadata collection, they said it was more useful than actual data. Likely because it's already computer consumable, and less dense. If FB gets your contact lists, and sees who you message, how much, and when, that's probably a hugely valuable commodity…

Maybe true, however computing power has increased substantially since then. It's quite easy for them to index all the messages and search for them later, or setup alerts on key words.

Re: Reporting a user to WhatsApp forwards a copy of recent messages from that chat

#33

Post by ffpip »

st1x7 wrote: post #11

As if they couldn't read everything anyway. Obviously, I have no evidence for making such a claim. What I know is 1. Facebook's reputation with regards to privacy. 2. The fact that they paid 20 billion dollars to buy a product without a monetization model. (Which is 20 times more than they paid for Instagram by the way.) 3. Whatsapp's founder left the company after the acquisition due to privacy concerns. It's enough…

Whatsapp is going to have ads soon. Plus facebook is going to start charging businesses who use it.

In India, the popularity of whatsapp is insane. They could run it worldwide by just showing ads to like half of Indian users

Re: Reporting a user to WhatsApp forwards a copy of recent messages from that chat

#35

Post by jandrese »

ffpip wrote: post #31
pw6hv wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it is not only Facebook that has complete access to the message history, but also Google. The funny thing is that I cannot find a way to access that backup myself, is anyone aware of a method to download that backup as a data dump and inspect it?

I don't know if it is included in your Google takeout. 98% of users enable that option. The fact that whatsapp is e2ee is a complete lie. Use Signal for true e2ee, or if you don't like it, Telegram. Telegram stores everything in the cloud tho. (they haven't disclosed any private messages, and are much more trustworthy than Whatsapp). They just wanted to back up messages without giving it to Google/Apple

Seems like the messages were e2ee, and when they got to the last e they were decrypted and then immediately uploaded to a third party because yay cloud.

Re: Reporting a user to WhatsApp forwards a copy of recent messages from that chat

#36

Post by ryukafalz »

vlovich123 wrote: post #8
quotemstr wrote: post #2

E2E encryption in closed source automatically updated programs doesn't provide any real assurance: whoever makes the program can subvert your privacy at any time. Do you trust the author of the program? Then E2E doesn't add much. Do you not trust the author of the program? E2E doesn't help. Either way, what's the point? Sure, I guess E2E provides some kind of additional privacy at the margin or something, but you can…

Are you verifying that all your OSS binaries you’re running match a reproducible build hash that’s been validated by multiple trusted sources? If not, you’re already engaging in a level of trust. The real question is how do you establish trust in the code you run and while OSS provides benefits at the margin or something, you can’t really rely on it for anything. For an example to illustrate the fallacious reasoning…

Not GP, but: although I'm not currently doing this consistently (I don't have the resources to set up build servers and there aren't many build servers for my distro yet) the distro I use does make it pretty straightforward to do this: https://guix.gnu.org/manual/en/html_node/Invoking-guix-chall...

If I want to do this for any particular package as a one-off, it's two commands.

Re: Reporting a user to WhatsApp forwards a copy of recent messages from that chat

#38

Post by keyme »

pw6hv wrote: post #28
keyme wrote: post #16

Just FYI, the Google Drive backup of your "E2E encrypted" whatsapp messages is stored in plain text... https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/chats/about-google-drive-ba...

So it is not only Facebook that has complete access to the message history, but also Google. The funny thing is that I cannot find a way to access that backup myself, is anyone aware of a method to download that backup as a data dump and inspect it?

There is no "official" way for you to download it.

IIRC it is stored in your Google Drive under an API key that is dedicated to whatsapp (in some kind of per-app storage). I don't really know much about Google Drive API.

However, I am fairly sure that the key is in the binary on your phone, so it shouldn't be much of a challenge to get access.

I think there was something like this on Github once, that no longer works (due to trivial changes, likely).

Update: https://github.com/YuriCosta/WhatsApp-GD-Extractor-Multithre...

Looks recent, didn't try myself.

Re: Reporting a user to WhatsApp forwards a copy of recent messages from that chat

#39

Post by ffpip »

WhyNotHugo wrote: post #22

I hate Facebook and WhatsApp as much as anyone else who cares about privacy. But there's nothing wrong in this particular change. It happens when you report someone as spam, and you get a clear notification about what's going on. There's a "cancel" button as big as the "report" button, so you can bail out if you disagree.

There is nothing wrong with it. I'm posting it because it's a new thing in Whatsapp, the worlds most popular messenger, and I wanted people to know of this change.

Re: Reporting a user to WhatsApp forwards a copy of recent messages from that chat

#40

Post by selykg »

ffpip wrote: post #39
WhyNotHugo wrote: post #22

I hate Facebook and WhatsApp as much as anyone else who cares about privacy. But there's nothing wrong in this particular change. It happens when you report someone as spam, and you get a clear notification about what's going on. There's a "cancel" button as big as the "report" button, so you can bail out if you disagree.

There is nothing wrong with it. I'm posting it because it's a new thing in Whatsapp, the worlds most popular messenger, and I wanted people to know of this change.

Your wording choice for the title makes it seem otherwise. It makes it sound like it's some big warning or big deal. Perhaps choose your words more carefully?
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