241–250 of 473 posts
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Source?
We did an experiment. We talked about how hard it is to find highlighter yellow nail polish. Nobody in the house is a purchaser of nail polish nor did we do any searches for highlighter or yellow or nail or polish. A day or two later my wife got an Instagram ad for highlighter yellow nail polish. It could have been a coincidence or maybe they were listening. Or maybe some combination of things we did previously led n…
I’m convinced WhatsApp’s e2e is BS. Because multiple times I’ve mentioned something I’ve never even googled and then had Facebook ads for those things show up minutes later. The most notable one being renting an apartment. I viewed an apartment then sent a message to the agent requesting window grills or latches and then had adverts for that stuff straight away. When ever I mention this on HN I get downvoted with lam…
In all your scenarios the likely answer , even with great e2e is that WhatsApp would still know who you messaged and they might have googled the words at some point. Your agent might have searched for latches after you messaged them. Your friend likely searched for cat litter before he messaged you. In each of those cases, E2E may still be active but you’re compromised by the human equivalent of the age old analog ho…
Jane sends unknown message to John
John fits the target profile of topic C
John gets shown ad for topic C
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coincidentally, Janes unknown message was about topic C. Likely because she too believed it to be applicable to John.
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Going further...
Maybe topic A was trending in Janes area. Jane's friend Sally got ads for topic A. sally talked to Jane about topic A. Jane searches topic A
A trend emerged where people who searched topic A, very soon afterwards searched topic E.
Jane is very late to hear the news about topic A. She gets shown ads for topic E. Jane thinks advertisers are reading her mind because she was thinking about topic E but didnt talk to anyone about it.
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Don’t iPhone have an indicator when the mic is recording? Also, this feels like it would be insanely easy to test by capturing the payloads sent to FB; you could even use something like Charles Proxy to do it. FB having access to microphone makes sense for plenty of other completely innocent reasons (for example, if you can record a video from inside the app). If this was actually true, I can’t help but feel that som…
No.
Just tested this out, zero indication that the mic is hot on a recent iPhone with up-to-date software when recording a voice memo.
Edit: There ya go... downvotes for saying the iPhone has no indicator when you record audio.
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Don’t iPhone have an indicator when the mic is recording? Also, this feels like it would be insanely easy to test by capturing the payloads sent to FB; you could even use something like Charles Proxy to do it. FB having access to microphone makes sense for plenty of other completely innocent reasons (for example, if you can record a video from inside the app). If this was actually true, I can’t help but feel that som…
The GP didn’t say they were using iPhone. The Facebook app on Android has been known to record audio even when running in the background
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Don’t iPhone have an indicator when the mic is recording? Also, this feels like it would be insanely easy to test by capturing the payloads sent to FB; you could even use something like Charles Proxy to do it. FB having access to microphone makes sense for plenty of other completely innocent reasons (for example, if you can record a video from inside the app). If this was actually true, I can’t help but feel that som…
And don’t forget the battery. A mic recording 24/7 would drain the battery much faster and would not go unnoticed unless specialized hardware is used like the one for “hey siri” and “ok google”.
Is it so hard to believe that Meta is snooping on WhatsApp conversations? Meta, a company of unprecedented size that was built over monetizing your private data? A company who's been caught in plenty of scandals (like Cambridge Analytic) about this exact sort of thing (violating their users' privacy)?
Someone from this community, which generally means educated, tech-literate and sensitive to these topics shares a perfectly plausible observation, of something that has been experienced as well by plenty of other folks, me included; and then some people come and try to make up the most convoluted explanations (candy boxes from Kazakhstan just happened to be trending that specific day, nothing to see here, move along!) to this phenomena and try to shift the blame away from Meta. Why do you do this? Are you Meta employees? A PR agency they hired?
It's just baffling. Apparently some people DO want to be abused.
Plot twist: we all get ads about candy boxes from KZ now.
For years and years and years, there have been people claiming their voice assistant (for example) is listening in on their conversation to show ads, and so forth. And it's always anecdote, never any hard data.
And the thing is, if this were the case, it would be relatively easy to prove with a controlled experiment that other people can replicate. And yet, somehow, magically that never happens.
Sure, Google used to algorithmically read your Gmail to show you relevant ads, but they were totally open about that, and then they stopped because it weirded people out anyways.
If Facebook were mining Whatsapp messages for ad topics, they'd probably be as open about it as Google was, out of pure self-interest. Because right now so much of their advertising is about how Whatsapp is trustworthy because it's E2EE etc. So if they were secretly analyzing messages, it would blow up the reputation of their main marketing message. There's a good chance it would be business suicide for Whatsapp. A profit-driven company probably isn't going to take that risk.
To be honest, this post feels social-engineered by a messaging competitor or something. I'm not saying it is, but the personal touch ("silly little game with my wife"), the innocent questioning ("Is... or am I missing something silly?"), and the total lack of any objective evidence (e.g. screenshots of messages and ads) are all HUGE red flags.
If Meta really is doing this, it's pretty easy to prove with hard data, and that's going to become a front-page news story on the New York Times. The fact that that hasn't happened leads me to think it's much more likely there's nothing here.
I think you partly may just be biased by happening to notice ads more if they fit the topic you sent to your wife or being lenient in deciding if ads meet the categorization. And if you dwell on an ad because it seems to match, you may get more similar ads. Here is how I think you could design a more robust (but less fun) experiment: - Come up with a bunch of topics, write them down on slips of paper, put the paper i…
I don't think it can be observed because it's likely a bug. It freaks users out. People uninstall the app and start threads like this. It's sort of like getting mugged once and then setting up a camera in a bunch of alleys to prove that muggers exist. You can even set up a camera of yourself running into dark alleys every night, but the odds of reproducing a mugging is still extremely low. There's a certain kind of p…
Aside from random coincidence, I could see this happening if you provided your personal information (especially email) for the loan application. It could have been shared to multiple underlying lenders alongside a data vendor who ultimately provided interest targeting (which can include car models) to an ad network.
Getting an ad for that specific model could also have been due to other online activity, such as checking the KBB.