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[1] https://medium.com/@sqrendk/how-you-can-use-facebook-to-trac...
If you trust those """services""" to be secure and trust that they care about your privacy, then you will be betrayed sooner or later, in ways you can't think of -- just like in the article. Fun fact, years ago I accidentally found out that my girlfriend at the time cheated on me on Snapchat, without me actually exploiting anything. She told me to join it with her, telling me that is going to be fun. Snapchat kept tr…
Very well written.
If you think there is no problem, you are wrong. The blog post does not show all the information leaks that this implies. Example: I can modify the script to monitor all the numbers I've in my phone, so that based on the online/offline status in a few weeks I can be able to guess who is having conversations together, discovering cheatings, work affairs, ... EDIT: Practical example. After collecting enough data about user X I create a table about the probability of this user being online in a given few-minutes time ranges. Then I check the online frequency of that user compared to the online statuses of another user Y. If the difference compared to the expected probability is significant, than I can suspect the two are chatting. Another thing I can use is that attivation delay of the online status, since often X sends a message to Y and this results in, a few seconds after, Y to be online, and then the contrary.
[then an HN user said she/he was not sure this was serious because maybe the users casually had similar patterns, so I replied:]
If you check the model I described in my comment, it should filter the "bus problem", since it will detect a chat only if, compared to the standard "bus time" probability of the user A chatting, it is chatting more if in the same range also B is chatting. If you add to this that people on Whatsapp usually do not talk to the exact minutes, it is definitely possible to create a robust system for guessing with good probability of two have often conversations. Also note that the phone numbers in input are not random, are the ones of a connected circle of persons. Add to this the fact that we can split the ranges even, potentially, by few minutes, and you can even detect interesting stuff for people having continuos chats with multiple persons like teenagers. Another thing that is possible probably is also "groups detection", since at new messages a set of users will activate at the same time.
[And the attack can be refined a lot with more powerful mathematical approaches]
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you really check Tinder for new "content" every two minutes?
> The company said that, on average, people log into the app 11 times a day https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/30/fashion/tinder-the-fast-g... But yes not every 2 minutes
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a known upper limit on the number of #s one account can have? I suppose you could use that limit to set up enough WhatsApp accounts on proxies to effectively have access to all registered #s?
There's another startup idea.
If you trust those """services""" to be secure and trust that they care about your privacy, then you will be betrayed sooner or later, in ways you can't think of -- just like in the article. Fun fact, years ago I accidentally found out that my girlfriend at the time cheated on me on Snapchat, without me actually exploiting anything. She told me to join it with her, telling me that is going to be fun. Snapchat kept tr…
Wait, when you view her profile (as a friend), it shows who has the highest 'score' in terms of contact with her? Wow, that IS a lot of data if they break it down by contact pairs.
If you trust those """services""" to be secure and trust that they care about your privacy, then you will be betrayed sooner or later, in ways you can't think of -- just like in the article. Fun fact, years ago I accidentally found out that my girlfriend at the time cheated on me on Snapchat, without me actually exploiting anything. She told me to join it with her, telling me that is going to be fun. Snapchat kept tr…
Wait, when you view her profile (as a friend), it shows who has the highest 'score' in terms of contact with her? Wow, that IS a lot of data if they break it down by contact pairs.
This was back in spring-summer 2015.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is there a known upper limit on the number of #s one account can have? I suppose you could use that limit to set up enough WhatsApp accounts on proxies to effectively have access to all registered #s?
There's another startup idea.
Is that the idea? Seems doable if you're not too risk averse, have no family and live in a country with weak extradition laws. Kidding, there's nothing illegal about any of this stuff or FB, Google and lots of other companies would not be in business.
FB would have a civil claim against you -- they paid several billion dollars for the legal right to all that user data!
I suspect a fairly small percentage of users is active enough that you get usable hourly data.
I agree with you, whatsapp is not like Tinder or Facebook you don't open it every 2 minutes to check if there is something new.