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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?

#461

Post by KaiserPro »

TacticalCoder wrote: post #432
KaiserPro wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pi…

> If WhatsApp is really E2EE encrypted, why would any of the other steps be necessary?

because you need to eliminate the chance of profiling by any other means.

Using the same phone as before means that the pre-existing profiles exist, which means that the relationship is already inferred. Because its trivially easy to track people, you need to eliminate all other variables.

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

#462

Post by joseprio »

edwnj wrote: post #323

Its very unlikely. Not because FB is a kewl company with super kewl morals. If you look at through the lens of game theory, the employees are extremely incentivised socially, ethically and financially to leak it. First they didn't break E2E because its very hard to do it without people knowing. So know we are talking about a "soft break" where they search/send key words before e2e kicks in. They wouldn't be able to t…

Completely agree, there's a ton of incentive for any security researcher to find E2EE leaks on the world's leading messaging app. In addition to that, Meta would be in ton of trouble if they did from a legal point of view.

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

#463

Post by joseprio »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #93

Meta owns the code. You type messages into a little text box, Meta (the whatsapp app) takes that plain text and encrypts it. There's no way that they do not have access to each and every single message you type for enough time to collect data on you. And, given it's Meta, there's no way they are not doing this.

That doesn't mean that they are collecting data related to the message themselves; if you can get proof of that, you'll make a ton of money! Whatsapp doesn't operate in a regulatory vacuum, and they would be in big trouble if they broke their E2EE/privacy promise.

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

#464

Post by RC_ITR »

autoexec wrote: post #448
hbn wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also have a theory that sometimes when people say "we were talking about and I never even typed it into my phone or anything, and suddenly I started seeing ads for it the next day!" that the person in the story may not have looked up , but someone else in the conversation might have Googled it or browsed an Amazon listing or something and they have some kind of connection in their ad profiles whether it be that the…

> I'm just not convinced of the always on microphones in phones listening for and processing every single thing considering how much battery drain that would cause, We know our phones commonly listen for "smart assistant" prompts and audio beacons ( https://www.nanalyze.com/2017/05/audio-beacons-monitor-smart... ), so they don't seem to have any trouble abusing the mic access. Honestly without a whistleblower, there'…

> "Roughly twice per second, a Roku TV captures video “snapshots” in 4K resolution. These snapshots are scanned through a database of content and ads, which allows the exposure to be matched to what is airing.

There were users under the impression that Roku was unaware of the content it was displaying? Like 4K snapshot or not, if I know a user is watching an NFL stream, I know that ad played.

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

#465

Post by autoexec »

RC_ITR wrote: post #464
autoexec wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm just not convinced of the always on microphones in phones listening for and processing every single thing considering how much battery drain that would cause, We know our phones commonly listen for "smart assistant" prompts and audio beacons ( https://www.nanalyze.com/2017/05/audio-beacons-monitor-smart... ), so they don't seem to have any trouble abusing the mic access. Honestly without a whistleblower, there'…

> "Roughly twice per second, a Roku TV captures video “snapshots” in 4K resolution. These snapshots are scanned through a database of content and ads, which allows the exposure to be matched to what is airing. There were users under the impression that Roku was unaware of the content it was displaying? Like 4K snapshot or not, if I know a user is watching an NFL stream, I know that ad played.

> There were users under the impression that Roku was unaware of the content it was displaying?

Sure, they expect Roku would know if they launched Disney+ or Netflix, but not that they would knew exactly what movie you were watching or what specific scenes you viewed and for how long. Same with personal videos cast to your screen via roku. It's pretty reasonable they'd know you were streaming content from your other devices, or which apps you were using, but less reasonable that they'd be watching over your shoulder taking notes.

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

#466

Post by brewmarche »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #91

One explanation I've heard for mysterious "We were talking about it in person but nothing else" ads, is that if you were connecting to the internet from the same Wi-Fi access point or IP address as someone else that did a web search on the topic or visited websites on the topic, it has connected you by way of shared internet connection. Is it possible something like that happened? In general, while anything is possib…

My thought exactly. As an experiment I would compare talking about new topics in person only vs. on WhatsApp. Actually there is a huge explosion of variations you can actually test: verbal communication with and without devices present (in case you also suspect audio recording), WhatsApp communication but no verbal, combinations, same network and different networks, etc.

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

#467

Post by planb »

dvtkrlbs wrote: post #139
mid-kid wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how easy it is to implement these things without anyone noticing since it's closed source, you have to assume it is happening in any scenario where you need any decent opsec. Even in scenarios where you don't, there's been enough cases of similar things happening with well-known apps and services to be wary.

It shoukd be easy to test since Ios has a feature called app privacy report that lists networks and permission access and no when you just open the instagram app it does not access photos. Only when you open add to story page or click on the new post icon it does the access.

Thanks for making me aware of this! You're right!

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

#468

Post by saluki »

warkdarrior wrote: post #363
Maximus9000 wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Thanks for this!! Now my email is full of offers to buy historical steam engines, steam engine parts, and engineer hats. Amazon is even advertising a subscription for coal deliveries!

I've already bought two steam engines this morning. The ads were pretty convincing.

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

#469

Post by Melatonic »

philliphaydon wrote: post #340
Melatonic wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What keyboard do you use? That is always the one that worries me.....

Stock one on iOS. Never used a custom keyboard. (except when I used Android cos the stock one was terrible ~8 years ago.

I use the default as well (android) and turn off all of the fancy AI mumbo jumbo. I also (rarely) use an old one called "Hackers Keyboard" (seems to now be discontinued in the store but it gives me access still to download it). Not sure if it is available at all for iOS but it gives you basically a full keyboard which can be useful for doing terminal stuff

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

#470

Post by jacooper »

kroltan wrote: post #190
jacooper wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont need to believe anything, its proven by mane scientific researches.

Can you link to some?

Couldn't find the one I have read before.

But here are a few that I could find.

https://eprint.iacr.org/2017/713.pdf

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312778290_WhatsApp_...

https://www.ijrte.org/wp-content/uploads/papers/v8i2S3/B1093...

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