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

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

#131

Post by titaniczero »

verytrivial wrote: post #80
titaniczero wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By accessing the device. It is not only E2E encrypted, WhatsApp servers are only a middleman, as soon as they arrive (double-check) they will be deleted from the server. Undelivered messages are retained up to 30 days, according to their privacy policy: We do not retain your messages in the ordinary course of providing our Services to you. Instead, your messages are stored on your device and not typically stored on o…

> End-to-end encryption means that your messages are encrypted to protect against us So, they say the protection is there once the encryption has been applied . They say nothing about what happens to the content before or after that on the end user's devices. That handling is however covered by other legitimate use clauses in the privacy statement. This covers keyword scanning for targetted ads (so a defence lawyer w…

Yeah, that could be tested by reversing engineering and analyzing your network traffic to see if there are requests leaking keywords

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

#132

Post by ale42 »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #85
viraptor wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The conversations being e2ee do not affect the app itself from acting on contents. By definition the app needs to know the contents to display it, but it can also update your ad profile. It doesn't even need to send the whole message to meta, just the keywords triggered, or a preprocessed vector defining your interests. E2ee means only the messages themselves can't be intercepted and read. But if anyone can actually…

The application processing the message for the purpose of displaying it is clear. But if the message is copied, read, analyzed and sent further on behalf of a third party before encryption, then that puts that third party in the middle between the sender and the recipient. A man in the middle directly undermines e2ee: "no one else reads your message". It doesn't matter if the third party made the messaging app or not…

E2EE doesn't prevent the app itself from analyzing messages locally, and sending updated interest profiles to meta... which can be a vector of weights or whatever thing they might be using to know what ads to show. If the logic is in the app, the message doesn't leave the app and E2EE is preserved.

This said, analyzing messages for the purpose of ad display is creepy, whatever the way it is done.

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

#135

Post by siilats »

rreyes1979 wrote: post #40
elondaits wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another option would be that META created a small model that could be run client-side and picked the right selection of ads to show elsewhere without even exfiltrating keywords.

Well, my wife sent me a picture of my daughter working on a puzzle. Less than 24 hours later, her Instagram was showing ads for a store that was selling the same type of puzzle as the one my daughter was playing with. So it's not just terms but images too.

Where did your daughter get the puzzle and when if she was just working on it :)

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

#136

Post by siilats »

rockbruno wrote: post #124

I keep being told this is a conspiracy and that several people checked on this and found no evidence of them spying on you, but I still have a hard time believing they're not doing something really sketchy. The case that was the final straw for me was when I was chatting with my partner and remembered a funny song from my childhood, so I opened YouTube on Safari and showed it to her. A couple of minutes later, she op…

You are both on same wifi

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

#137

Post by rrdharan »

rockbruno wrote: post #124

I keep being told this is a conspiracy and that several people checked on this and found no evidence of them spying on you, but I still have a hard time believing they're not doing something really sketchy. The case that was the final straw for me was when I was chatting with my partner and remembered a funny song from my childhood, so I opened YouTube on Safari and showed it to her. A couple of minutes later, she op…

Pretty sure this can be explained without GPS, if you were both using the same internet connection (e.g. home WiFi NAT’ed through the same IP from your ISO).

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

#138

Post by lnauta »

rockbruno wrote: post #124

I keep being told this is a conspiracy and that several people checked on this and found no evidence of them spying on you, but I still have a hard time believing they're not doing something really sketchy. The case that was the final straw for me was when I was chatting with my partner and remembered a funny song from my childhood, so I opened YouTube on Safari and showed it to her. A couple of minutes later, she op…

The reply all podcast has a nice episode on this, #109. Whether your phone is listening to your conversations.

They conclude that ads are shown to people you know. So you search for a product and then your partner gets ads for this product too, as they know you spend a lot of time together through other tracking methods.

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

#139

Post by dvtkrlbs »

mid-kid wrote: post #97
paavohtl wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this something that actually happens (= can anyone prove this by disassembling the app or MITMing the network traffic), or is it just unfounded paranoia?

Considering how easy it is to implement these things without anyone noticing since it's closed source, you have to assume it is happening in any scenario where you need any decent opsec. Even in scenarios where you don't, there's been enough cases of similar things happening with well-known apps and services to be wary.

It shoukd be easy to test since Ios has a feature called app privacy report that lists networks and permission access and no when you just open the instagram app it does not access photos. Only when you open add to story page or click on the new post icon it does the access.

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

#140

Post by FieryTransition »

If the confidentiality of your messaging is a concern, you shouldn't be using whatsapp anyway or most closed source software. There's mostly no point in speculating, because it will be hard to verify the extent of information leakage from the vendor anyway.

It would be better to use signal or element, something that tries to solve the key exchange problem. And if you are even more concerned, run their respective server software on your own hardware. Then you can inspect what goes in and out.

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