Your silly game is what watchdogs should be playing.
Sadly, they just never seem to be up to the task.
Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
371–380 of 473 posts
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google, Apple, or Meta retain the power to ship a tweaked binary with a compromised RNG to a subset of users if authorities order them to be it now or in the future after a privacy policy change. Proprietary encryption means users cannot verify or control the keys or the code that generates or uses the keys. The app can exfiltrate the keys or do any keyword processing on behalf of Meta as well which can include well…
Even with end to end encryption couldnt the app at the end also be just aggregating the data (or even transcribing audio) to send over separately?
Yeah though this is more likely to be detected with basic network analysis. Selectively compromising the RNG seed would be much harder to detect without source code.
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
A simpler protocol to realize that the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is probably what's happening: - pick said topic, something you never cared about before, talk about it but don't write any messages containing it; - for 1 month record every ad you see about it; - send a message about the topic; - for another month, record every ad you see about it Comparing the number of occurrences will tell you what is happening.
It also has to be a topic that advertisers would pay to target you with. You can't talk about something super obscure that advertisers don't care about - like steam engines.
Your inbox is now full of ads for model trains and hobby stores.
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#374Earlier 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…
This is why incognito mode has the warnings it does about “people can still see your screen”
No matter how secure the platform, if you apply for a loan through it, the loan provider will “know” you want a loan, and happily sell that data.
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#375(wrt some comments in this thread) 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 sen…
It's hard to believe because I worked there and worked on this stuff (data and ML side) and know that they aren't.
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#376[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#377Just 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.
Google can in theory read what is on your screen (assuming you use Android) regardless what app with what encryption you use.
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#378I 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…
You can’t come up with the topics yourself either, because the topics you will think up are different based on your demographic / type of person you are, and ad networks basically try to guess that.
The idea is that you may discover the topics you don’t talk about that week still come up as much as those you do.
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#379I 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…
An important thing you’re missing is the control. You should record every ad. You need to know if you got 3 topics of ads every day and 1/3 of them are related to that secret topic, OR if you get 300 topics every day and 1/300 are related to that secret topic. If it’s the former, it’s suspicious, if it’s the latter, it’s way less suspicious.
The control is the topic you pick that you don’t discuss on WhatsApp or messenger. The idea is random differences between topics should average out over many trials.
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#380I 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…
You can’t come up with the topics yourself either, because the topics you will think up are different based on your demographic / type of person you are, and ad networks basically try to guess that.
You can if you first come up with a list of topics, and then once you have that list, randomly assign each of those topics to one of the three categories.