Have you considered the possibility that Facebook is listening to you via the chips Mark Zuckerberg added to the COVID vaccine that he forced you to take?
Just do your own research, man...
Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
431–440 of 473 posts
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#432(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…
> Is it so hard to believe that Meta is snooping on WhatsApp conversations? for a lot of people, no > Meta, a company of unprecedented size that was built over monetizing your private data? one of many companies, however "meta" does have the advantage that you can opt out of them, mostly. > A company who's been caught in plenty of scandals (like Cambridge Analytic) about this exact sort of thing (violating their user…
> 5) message each other about something. However you need to source your ideas from something offline, like a book from a thrift store or the like. maybe an old magazine. open a page, pick the first thing your finger lands on. this will eliminate the "I heard about x" or "i'm in the mood for y"
Wait... If WhatsApp is really E2EE encrypted, why would any of the other steps be necessary? Dude and his wife can simply pick at page at random from a magazine in a store, never search anything online about it, start talking about it using WhatsApp as if it was something of great interest to them. If they start getting related ads, obviously something shady is going on. There's no need for new phones / new GMail accounts / etc.
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#433Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
E2EE most certainly does exclude analyzing messages anywhere for a third party. Notice that "ends" in "end-to-end" are users, not applications. When an application forwards things to an entity, then that entity becomes an "end" of the conversation. When it displays a message to the user, the way the user wants, then the user is the end. When it processes the message and delivers results to Facebook, the way Facebook…
> Notice that "ends" in "end-to-end" are users, not applications.
That's not right. First, it's technically an impossible, since users can't do encryption themselves - it's the application that does it. That's where the e2ee boundary is.
Second, we've got e2ee communication between non-user entities as well. There's are servers using for example zerotier which communicate e2ee through other nodes. Third, applications can definitely send the data to other parties automatically. WhatsApp executing backups as configured does not make it not e2ee.
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Someone did this trick with me in the '80s, but the numbers were to sum to 13. I still said "carrot", however. Wish I would have thought to use a different number than 13 when I tried it out on others.
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is, your smart TV could be spying you too, if it's capable of voice commands or videoconference. If you discuss sex toys near it, at least some related keywords could make their way to targeted advertising. My wife and I routinely use ad blockers, private browser windows, browser profiles, and try to use as little ad-supported products as possible. This doesn't stop targeted advertising, I guess because m…
Smart TVs in general use IP address to try target devices across households, which is against the privacy policies of a lot of ad tech providers because IPs are not redactable/resettable by an end-user. The best way for small ad tech providers to compete with "big tech" has been to cross lines that the bigger companies won't cross, this is an example for why there are a lot of profitable ad tech companies in the conn…
The first thing I did when helping my parents set up their new LG OLED TV's at xmas was to disable all the ads and tracking. It's exhausting how much pressure they put on you to opt-in, and how many layers there are, constantly implying the TV will be nonfunctional without it.
But sure enough, it works just fine with no ads, no "free tv channels", and no voice functionality.
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#436As someone who has actually worked on end to end encryption at Meta, I can tell you I am not aware of anything where the company reads your WhatsApp messages - either in transit or device. The company takes fairly serious measures to ensure it cannot even accidentally infer such contents. I don't know what is happening in this specific case. Perhaps the ads came from some other similar search queries. Perhaps they ca…
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…
If they modified the RNG of person A's phone app during a forced stealth update, then shouldn't person B not be able to decrypt the message? Have you ever had an app update to Whatsapp that you cannot communicate with other people until you are forced to update? The alternative is that there is a vast internal conspiracy at meta that hundreds of engineers, and hundreds of ex-engineers are somehow silent on, which would be using 2 encryption keys, one that law enforcement can read, and one that the other end of the device can read. Isn't provable that Whatsapp the app is using the operating system level secure prng functions? If there was evidence of this, wouldn't it be great for a whistleblower to come out and make a killing shorting Meta's stock? Right now would be the perfect time to be kicked while they are down.
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#437(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…
For anyone who has ever worked at a FAANG like company in the last decade, yes, this is actually very hard to believe. Despite the shady image they have, these companies go to great lengths to avoid doing shady things (because ultimately it’s bad for business). Not to mention the hundreds of tech employees that would have to be involved and keep quiet in this type of “conspiracy”. It’s incredibly unlikely, I truly be…
Let me start by saying I have no idea if Facebook is reading my encrypted messages or whatever. However, I will say that in my experience, whether something is bad for business if it gets discovered is usually not a concern for large corporations, if the thing being done makes them more money. Because everything is just a balance sheet.
For an example from non-FAANG companies, see illegal dumping of toxic waste by chemical companies, such as DuPont and PFOAs [1]. Despite knowing what they did was illegal, the math works out -- products with PFOAs were something like $1 billion in annual profit, and even when they got caught the fines and legals were a fraction of that, spread out over many years.
So I personally believe these companies 100% would do shady shit if it increases their profit margins. And why wouldn't they? There is no room for morals in capitalism, and the drawbacks are slim.
[1]https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/magazine/the-lawyer-who-b...
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#438(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…
Well, at least some people here are smart enough to know how to run disassemblers and packet captures. Clearly not everyone, but a few tech literate people.
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
From WhatsApp privacy policy: We limit the information we share with Meta in important ways. For example, we will always protect your personal conversations with end-to-end encryption, so that neither WhatsApp nor Meta can see these private messages.
> WhatsApp privacy policy Facebook has a deep culture of pathological lying. They lied to the FTC [1]. They lied to WhatsApp and to the EU [2]. They created an Oversight Board and then lied to it [3]. Each of those lies are more substantial than lying in a privacy policy. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/182_3109_fa... [2] https://euobserver.com/digital/137953 [3] https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/21…
saying someone lied in the past is not convincing evidence that any arbitrary statement by them is affirmatively a lie
Re: Ask HN: Ads triggered by WhatsApp “end to end encrypted” messages?
#440(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…
For anyone who has ever worked at a FAANG like company in the last decade, yes, this is actually very hard to believe. Despite the shady image they have, these companies go to great lengths to avoid doing shady things (because ultimately it’s bad for business). Not to mention the hundreds of tech employees that would have to be involved and keep quiet in this type of “conspiracy”. It’s incredibly unlikely, I truly be…
"bad for business" leads to systems that do unexpected things. For instance, on-device generate identifiers for any image sent, and send the identifier out-of-band. This helps catch child pornography.
I can imagine the same thing done for text. The text might be encrypted, but interest keywords might be generated on-device and sent out-of-band.