Screenshot/OP was deleted :-/
OP most likely realized their mistake and deleted the thread instead of owning up to it.
The thread was deleted by the OP, not removed by moderators (reddit visibly differentiates between the two)
WhatsApp just downloaded 12k photos of other people's information on my phone
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: WhatsApp just downloaded 12k photos of other people's information on my phone
#22Screenshot/OP was deleted :-/
OP most likely realized their mistake and deleted the thread instead of owning up to it. The thread was deleted by the OP, not removed by moderators (reddit visibly differentiates between the two)
OP replied in the comments why he deleted it: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/rxtl22/w...
TL;DR: he's an idiot.
A bit longer: OP went to a shop to get his phone repaired. Shop gave him a loaner phone, which had been used by many many people and apparently never wiped. OP set up Google backup on that phone and those photos got uploaded onto his WhatsApp backup. OP got a new phone, set up WhatsApp, and WhatsApp downloaded the pics from the loaner phone onto his.
Re: WhatsApp just downloaded 12k photos of other people's information on my phone
#23Why should I believe them?(OP)
A second redditor has reported the same behaviour, although it's in the same (seemingly inappropriate) subreddit and was posted 4 hours later so it may just be a copycat: https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/ry0cnr/d... https://web.archive.org/web/20220107101132/https://old.reddi... Edit: The thread has now been deleted, so both reddit threads about this issue are deleted.
I went to OP's account, he replied inside the thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/rxtl22/w...
TL; DR: photos were from a loaner phone that was never wiped that OP backed up, and then restored onto his new phone.
Re: WhatsApp just downloaded 12k photos of other people's information on my phone
#24https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/rxtl22/w...
OP followed up with:
>I actually realized what happened and I didn't want to keep it up and misinform other users or cause more damage to Google or Whatsapp.
>So what happened is I actually used a temporary phone given to me by a repair service prior to buying this phone, due to mine being repaired by said service. The service was handing that phone to anyone who needed one while their phone was in service, like I did and thus was used by dozens of people in the past years, and so had thousands of photos on it. When I used it, whatsapp backed all that data into my drive. So... When I bought a new phone, and restored the backup to it, what essentially happened was all that data from the service phone was transfered onto the new one. That's how I ended up with loads of random people's data.
>So in fact the fault was the fact that the service wasn't deleting data on the phone before handing it over to other clients.
Re: WhatsApp just downloaded 12k photos of other people's information on my phone
#25https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/rxtl22/w... OP followed up with: >I actually realized what happened and I didn't want to keep it up and misinform other users or cause more damage to Google or Whatsapp. >So what happened is I actually used a temporary phone given to me by a repair service prior to buying this phone, due to mine being repaired by said service. The service was handing that phone to a…
Beyond this particular case, it happened something similar to me and other people i know (using burner chips, mainly); after a while of not paying the bill/adding credit to your line, the companies here cut the service and repurpose the number to sell again to a new person. This process, though, does not disable WhatsApp nor its backups if you already had a session open, so when you download WhatsApp to create your account with your "brand new" number, it instead logins to the account created before.
Then, it autodownloads all the data, keep chatting with their contacts, and everything you would normally do when you migrate an existing account to a new phone.
I fathom this is responsibility of the telcos that reuse the numbers, but it seems is already an established practice and apparently there is no procedure to disclose to most common services that the number is dead.
I thought something like that was going on, and even more reasons to move on from SMS/phone auth.
Re: WhatsApp just downloaded 12k photos of other people's information on my phone
#26I have always been a bit dubious about e2e encryption on whatsapp especially seeing how the forward message feature work. Example: upload a few minutes long video to a whatsapp contact, depending on your phone connection it can take up to a few minutes. Then forward it to other contacts or group and it is done instantaneously. For the videos and images to be sent and retrieved instantaneously by my contacts when forw…
The files that the reddit user apparently got are not coming from whatsapp server they come from google/apple cloud backup according to the infos shared.
See other comments on how forwarding works.
Re: WhatsApp just downloaded 12k photos of other people's information on my phone
#27This made me think about the case of mobile network operators recycling phone numbers. How does WhatsApp handle that? What about Telegram which isn’t e2e encrypted and stores everything on their servers by default? There are operators recycling numbers after less than a year of inactivity/zero balance on pre paid SIMs.
Telegram by default deletes all data after 6 months of inactivity. You can also set a password and configure two-step verification.
There is no way to confirm this claim so its as good/bad as whatever all the other providers say. Personally I think they are more likely to actually care and delete the stuff properly because they have no use for it and it costs them serious money to keep storing it. But that's just a opinion.