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Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

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Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#311

Post by jeroenhd »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #95
Hizonner wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What Gemini should be able to do with WhatsApp: Exactly and only what any other random app on the phone could do with WhatsApp, assuming that you have enabled that in exactly the way you would have to enable any other random app to do it. Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source of the OS to give its software special privilege to reach inside of third-party apps.

Unfortunately the situation on Android is that other apps cannot do anything with WhatsApp, and there's fuck all you can do about it as a user. I shouldn't need Google special-casing Gemini to allow LLMs to interact with my messages. I should be able to wire up Tasker to WhatsApp on one end, and to OpenAI or Anthropic models of my choice via API calls on the other end. Alas, Android is basically like iPhone now, just…

WhatsApp has been forced by the EU to provide access to third parties. If there's any app that third party apps can interact with, it's WhatsApp.

I also can't really find the mechanism at use here. I don't know if WhatsApp is exposing some kind of dedicated assistant API that an alternative assistant (the one you can pick in the settings) might be able to use.

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#312

Post by jeroenhd »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #180
lern_too_spel wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source of the OS to give its software special privilege to reach inside of third-party apps Gemini uses the same APIs and permissions as any other Android app.

This is trivial to verify. Just look at the permissions requested by the Google app like I did.

Google Gemini shares a namespace with system-level components. You can't just take the APK and check the permissions in it to verify Google's access, you'd also need to go through Play Services, AI Core, and all the other auxiliary Android components to be sure.

Without details on how Gemini is interacting with WhatsApp, it's hard to say if Google is privileged or not. It's possible Facebook just struck a deal with Google.

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#313

Post by fransje26 »

ilpianista wrote: post #285
fransje26 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you happen to have good resources detailing the process?

Pretty much what I summarized back in 2019: https://scarpino.dev/posts/automated-phone-backup-with-synct... Nowayadays Syncthing is no more maintained due to some PlayStore drama, but Syncthing-Fork is a good replacement.

I'll start from there, thanks!

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#314

Post by TeMPOraL »

jeroenhd wrote: post #311
TeMPOraL wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately the situation on Android is that other apps cannot do anything with WhatsApp, and there's fuck all you can do about it as a user. I shouldn't need Google special-casing Gemini to allow LLMs to interact with my messages. I should be able to wire up Tasker to WhatsApp on one end, and to OpenAI or Anthropic models of my choice via API calls on the other end. Alas, Android is basically like iPhone now, just…

WhatsApp has been forced by the EU to provide access to third parties. If there's any app that third party apps can interact with, it's WhatsApp. I also can't really find the mechanism at use here. I don't know if WhatsApp is exposing some kind of dedicated assistant API that an alternative assistant (the one you can pick in the settings) might be able to use.

I'll need to check again. Maybe it's my rusty Android skills, but last time I checked (circa a year ago), I got the impression it's going out of its way to stay fully opaque from the outside.

It's also notoriously the one popular app that intentionally doesn't offer any kind of API access for normal users - it only has one to allow companies to automate advertising bots.

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#316

Post by pc86 »

transcriptase wrote: post #242
pc86 wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that someone disagrees with you doesn't mean they're operating in bad faith.

It does when it that person is taking a charitable view of anything Google has done since about 2011.

That may mean they're stupid but it still doesn't constitute bad faith. Do you know what "bad faith" means in this context?

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#317

Post by anton-c »

Barbing wrote: post #102
sega_sai wrote: post #56

The whole situation with Gemini Apps Activity setting is so frustrating. Even if I pay for Gemini Pro, the only way to make sure there will be no human looking at your chats is to set Apps Activity to off, which means you don't have any history for Gemini chats, even for the messages from a minute ago.

Reminiscent of their heavy handed approach to disabling watch history on YouTube, even when paying for YouTube Premium. (Google punishes viewers who make themselves less valuable to advertisers by giving them an entirely blank homepage.)

I've had my youtube watch history off for years. It still knows what I like.

Hence why I open a new private browser for each session.

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#318

Post by red-iron-pine »

Hizonner wrote: post #77
jeroenhd wrote: post #47

Google has been working on this since November last year going by the wayback archive of the support page for this feature. I'm not seeing any indication that Gemini can read your messages, though. You can compose messages and start calls, but I can't get it to read me any of my messages. In fact, I can't even get it to send messages to group chats, only to individual contacts. The feature makes a lot of sense, of co…

What Gemini should be able to do with WhatsApp: Exactly and only what any other random app on the phone could do with WhatsApp, assuming that you have enabled that in exactly the way you would have to enable any other random app to do it. Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source of the OS to give its software special privilege to reach inside of third-party apps.

> Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source of the OS to give its software special privilege to reach inside of third-party apps.

good luck. why do you think they bothered to create an OS in the first place? like, what did you think a data mining company would create an OS for?

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#319

Post by anton-c »

dockerd wrote: post #69
GiorgioG wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monetization. If people aren’t willing to pay for the products, these companies have figured out how to make the customers’ data the product.

Most paid streaming services now started showing ads because they are looking for more revenue and profit.

I know I'm a pig-headed stick in the mud, but if more people refused to watch it on principle because of this, we would see some changes in business models. It should be easy to pay and remove all ads. But I can't expect everyone to feel the same as me. It is a dream though.

Since I can't remove ads by paying, I don't pay for a single subscription content service. The pirate sites have stuff the day it premiers, and there's no nonsense about shows split between services. Also the broken promise of being able to change language easily is actually available on those sites. I had to buy then return shin godzilla from prime video - 2 separate versions. Haven't bought or rented on there since. Also had more than one service saying my stuff is not hdcp compliant when it is. Buggy, laggy messes.

I know im a minority but there is money on the table I would gladly pay for a decent service.

Re: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

#320

Post by red-iron-pine »

pdpi wrote: post #240
potatoproduct wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple is an advertising company. https://ads.apple.com/ Generates billions for Apple and is growing rapidly, since they implemented increasingly aggressive "privacy features" to block their competitors.

Apple has an advertising business. That’s materially different from having advertising as your core revenue stream. Likewise, Google has a consumer electronics business, but they’re not a consumer electronics company.

billions of dollars means it is a core revenue stream
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