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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?

#341

Post by TigeriusKirk »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #329
whimsicalism wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general I agree, but I think when you are being explicitly asked for a "source" in response to an allegation that it is settled that FB has been "caught recording people," I would prefer to not have anecdotes in reply.

I mean… this is a conversation, not some sort of formal debate? Someone is telling you "hey, this happened to me," and your response isn't "have you considered this other explanation?" but rather "I won't discuss this further unless you do a bunch of research and present the results to me."

They aren't saying "this happened to me"

They're saying "facebook has been caught multiple times doing this", which is not a personal anecdote, but an assertion that proof exists and is available.

So where is it?

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

#342

Post by whimsicalism »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #336
whimsicalism wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy to continue discuss it (not sure where you are getting the idea that I'm not from), but I think it is also fair to point out when someone asks for a source to a claim that something has been proven/caught and instead the replies are a bunch of personal stories where people think something is happening. To me, that is indicative that, contra the original claim, no such thing has ever been proven. Is it verbo…

It's not verboten. But, candidly, it is kind of rude. What's the difference between someone at, say, the EFF "proving" something happened by running an experiment and writing about it publicly, and someone on Hacker News doing the same?

I disagree that it is rude to point out something is an anecdote.

The proof has to do with the technical details, not the authority figure posting it. If someone from the EFF wrote a blog post with the same content as these HN posters, I would be similarly dismissive of this as "proof."

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

#343

Post by hayst4ck »

thetrb wrote: post #330
hayst4ck wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Perhaps the ads came from some other similar search queries. Perhaps they came from the keyboard intercepting what was typed. Or perhaps something else that I can't think of. But I'm nearly certain it did not come from meta intercepting the contents of your messages. Isn't this kind of splitting hairs? Does it matter if text information came from a "side channel"? It seems like the promise Facebook makes is that 'y…

The thing is if it's a 3rd-party Android keyboard or similar that logs your messages then there's nothing Meta can do about this.

That's still Facebook's problem, no excuses. Facebook absolutely has the power and resources to lobby google and congress. Security teams at both companies will unequivocally agree that keylogging presents an extremely grave security risk that consumers are unlikely to understand the consequences of and therefore need to be protected from.

Imagine a hapless military professional/politician downloading one.

The problem is one of alignment. Facebook wants to monetize whatsapp and wants the whatsapp data. That's why there was a mass exodus to signal in the first place. Facebook was weakening the protections of the app.

Due to the alignment problem Facebook can't advertise whatsapp as the secure and private choice because they are actively working to make it less secure and private. That's why Brian Acton quit (leaving $$$$$$$ behind) in the first place.

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

#344

Post by sangnoir »

dahdum wrote: post #250
muzani wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> But I get rejected for a loan via WhatsApp and then used car ads appear for that model of car that I applied a loan for? That's a bit on the nose. 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 (w…

> Getting an ad for that specific model could also have been due to other online activity, such as checking the KBB

I suspect op may have researched the car model and got retargeted: some ad networks keep track of specific products you've shown interest in (not generic interest-areas like Google ads) and track you via a cookie. You may be visiting a completely different site that uses the same network, and get ads on the exact product you've spent minutes reading about.

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

#345

Post by FabHK »

kome wrote: post #184
philliphaydon wrote: post #172

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…

this is the point. too much evidence against it and not enough evidence for it. i just don't trust facebook, google, apple etc.

They're not in the same category. Two of those are advertisement firms, one is a hardware company.

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

#347

Post by _8j50 »

_8j50 wrote: post #158
dan-robertson wrote: post #146

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…

This is facebook. They've been caught recording people and selling that for advertising, they deny it because technically your audio is transcripted not recorded and they can send only some keywords back so whole conversations aren't sent back to them.

Plenty of research and news stories about this if you care to search. The speculative part of my comment is about the transcription which I'm speculating because of their fervent denials despite evidence which technically their wording in their denial statements is correct.

If I had to guess, your whatsapp messages are e2e secured but keywords are sent to facebook when they match some condition. So if you message "happy birthday" to someone, they won't see that but the fact that the keyword "birthday" was found even if the word isn't included is sent to fb. That way they can say they're not snooping your messages.

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

#348

Post by titaniczero »

netsectoday wrote: post #300
titaniczero wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try any voice recording app for a few hours, now use the facebook app for the same number of hours. The impact on battery life of a mic actively recording alone is very noticeable, so noticeable that your phone has a special chip just to recognize patterns similar to “hey siri”.

Quoted post unavailable.

> This way too I can troll people on the internet when they suspect this is happening and I can say "bUt ThE bAtTeRy LiFe!" to defend Meta: my corporate overlord business daddy.

Please, stop with the sarcasm.

Okey, let’s say they manage to record us without a huge impact on our battery life. Now, how do you send these recordings or even the extracted keywords from a popular app, a client installed on devices controlled by the users and susceptible to reverse engineering and network traffic analysis without anyone noticing it?

It’s just too much risk and they don’t even need it, see my relevant reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32950204#32953216.

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

#349

Post by FabHK »

orangecat wrote: post #286
snowmizuh-04 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the Feynman reference. Thank you. And this may be right. However, I also am reminded of Nassim Taleb's Fat Tony, who when asked 'what are the odds of flipping a coin heads 10 times in a row?' responds with 'fuggehdabowdit. it's a hustle.' There's a scientific response, which can be very naive in some ways, and there's the Fat Tony street analysis. As I've gotten older, I tend to value the latter.

As I've gotten older, I tend to value the latter. Definitely a good perspective to keep in mind. But at Facebook scale, if a billion people flip an actually fair coin 10 times, around a million of them will get 10 heads. It would be understandable for those people to conclude that the coin is biased, but they'd be wrong.

Right. And 0.1% of them, 1000, will post here on HN how this can't possibly be a coincidence.

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

#350

Post by verisimi »

All these corporation apologists... why wouldn't Meta/Fecesbook do this? You can read about corporate over-reach on a daily basis - and that's just what we find out about. Here are some of todays privacy headlines on the register, right now:

Significant customer data exposed in attack on Australian telco - Subscribers have questions – like 'When were you going to tell us?'

Boeing to pay SEC $200m to settle charges it misled investors over 737 MAX safety - Ex-CEO also on the hook for $1m after skipping over known software issues

Privacy watchdog steps up fight against Europol's hoarding of personal data - If you could stop storing records on people unconnected to any crimes, that would be great

Meta accused of breaking the law by secretly tracking iPhone users - Ad goliath reckons complaint is meritless – but it would, wouldn't it?

Federal agencies buying Americans' internet data challenged by US senators - Maybe we don't want to go with the netflow, man

.. and I'm only halfway through!

Did you think the rule of law is there to protect you? Do you think corporations won't break the law to get access to information? Have you learnt nothing?!

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