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

Post by codethief » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

Melatonic wrote: post #305

criddell wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Do you have the setting that turns on end to end encryption? I thought by default it was off (and always off for group chats) ?

Post by kome » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 5:46 PM UTC

codethief wrote: post #352

kome wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just because that the messages might be sent end-to-end encrypted from Sue to Joe does not mean Meta cannot read them. so what's the point? just inconvenience. better to use telegram at this point.

…and have no encryption at all? (Unless you manually enable it for a given conversation.)

Post by netsectoday » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 5:49 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #314

netsectoday wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Goal posts? Is this a competition? The phone was sitting between two people having a conversation, one of them "swiped it open" meaning it was off to begin with, then was immediately displayed an ad for that conversation, and upon hearing this the tech-savvy person in the house understood what happened, confirmed it with the mic access to facebook in the settings, and then disabled the behavior.

> Goal posts? Is this a competition? Considering the original claim was "zero indication that the mic is hot" and now it's "zero indication that the mic is hot if the screen is off", I'd say that the goal post has moved considerably. But if you want to know if Facebook is listening to you through the iPhone microphone, you should probably look at the screen for the indicator. iOS apps can't start recording on their o…

Post by rr888 » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 5:52 PM UTC

jtbayly wrote: post #103

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…

> Just because that the messages might be sent end-to-end encrypted from Sue to Joe does not mean Meta cannot read them. No, that's precisely what End-to-End encryption means.

Post by thetrb » Fri, Sep 23, 2022, 5:55 PM UTC

hayst4ck wrote: post #343

thetrb wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 proble…