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Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?

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Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?

#1

Post by rreyes1979 »

Hi all. We've been playing a silly little game with my wife lately: we send each other messages about some topic we never talk about and then wait for ads related to our conversation to start showing up in Instagram. As of the last month, they never fail to show up.

Please keep in mind that this is a conversation between two "personal" accounts, no business accounts involved. More so, we haven't accepted the new terms of use that "allowed" WhatsApp to access messages between personal accounts and business accounts.

Is WhatsApp scanning personal messages to target their ads as we are noticing? Weren't WhatsApp messages end to end encrypted? Is this a violation of their Terms of Use or am I missing something silly?

Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?

#2

Post by h2odragon »

Assuming you're using a phone, is there a "keyboard app" that could be intercepting things before WhatsApp? other endpoint issues with security? Not that I'd be surprised to see a big company flatly lying about their product, but because they're so big I suspect you need to work hard to eliminate other possibilities before taking them to court.

Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?

#3

Post by napolux »

IANAL of course, but you should read the ToS carefully and you will probably find something that allows them to read your messages anyway.

e2e encryption doesn't forbid to read the messages as you type or read them or read a screenshot of the screen or whatever they can do inside an app :P

They were caught activating your camera by "error" a while ago https://www.macrumors.com/2019/11/12/facebook-bug-camera-bac...

As per the experiment you did...

We did the same experiment with a female friend a while ago. We started talking about her pregnancy (a topic we never touched, as she was single and of course not pregnant) in a group chat, specifically targeting her. Sure enough, after a couple of days her fb and instagram were full of strolley ads (but not ours) :)

Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?

#4

Post by shafyy »

Could it just be confirmation bias? Or could it be that the correlation is the other way around: You see something online, decide to pick that as your topic with your partner (unconciously) and the ads show up because of the initial location you have seen the topic.

Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?

#5

Post by FreeHugs »

Just because that the messages might be sent end-to-end encrypted from Sue to Joe does not mean Meta cannot read them.

Meta has control over the app Sue uses. So they could send them to Meta unencrypted in addition to sending them to Joe in an encrypted fashion.

Or they just extract the relevant terms:

Sue->Joe: "Hello Joe, I'm so excited! We are going to have a baby! Let's call it Dingbert. You're not the father! Jim is. I hope you don't mind too much!".

Sue->Meta: "Sue will have a baby"

Insta->Sue: "Check out these cute baby clothes!"

Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?

#6

Post by rreyes1979 »

h2odragon wrote: post #2

Assuming you're using a phone, is there a "keyboard app" that could be intercepting things before WhatsApp? other endpoint issues with security? Not that I'd be surprised to see a big company flatly lying about their product, but because they're so big I suspect you need to work hard to eliminate other possibilities before taking them to court.

No keyboard app. We use the regular Android Keyboard provided by Google.

Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?

#7

Post by rreyes1979 »

FreeHugs wrote: post #5

Just because that the messages might be sent end-to-end encrypted from Sue to Joe does not mean Meta cannot read them. Meta has control over the app Sue uses. So they could send them to Meta unencrypted in addition to sending them to Joe in an encrypted fashion. Or they just extract the relevant terms: Sue->Joe: "Hello Joe, I'm so excited! We are going to have a baby! Let's call it Dingbert. You're not the father! Ji…

I think they are extracting terms. Some of the messages generated ads that were related to a term but not really about the conversation.

Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?

#8

Post by arnath »

rreyes1979 wrote: post #6
h2odragon wrote: post #2

Assuming you're using a phone, is there a "keyboard app" that could be intercepting things before WhatsApp? other endpoint issues with security? Not that I'd be surprised to see a big company flatly lying about their product, but because they're so big I suspect you need to work hard to eliminate other possibilities before taking them to court.

No keyboard app. We use the regular Android Keyboard provided by Google.

But doesn’t Gboard send your typing data to Google?

Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?

#9

Post by alpaca128 »

Most users activate WhatsApp's suggested "backup" feature which uploads all chats and those are most likely not E2E encrypted. And of course Meta could just directly read and upload stuff from the app, they probably buried a vague clause for that somewhere in their agreement.

Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?

#10

Post by lifeinthevoid »

shafyy wrote: post #4

Could it just be confirmation bias? Or could it be that the correlation is the other way around: You see something online, decide to pick that as your topic with your partner (unconciously) and the ads show up because of the initial location you have seen the topic.

While that's possible, the more plausible explanation is Meta reading your messages imo.
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