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Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

jorislacance.fr

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Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#41

Post by gsich »

hudixt wrote: post #16

I had done same thing around this in 2019. This doesn't stop at this. There were quite correlation that I was able to find with basic setup The results can be quite horrifying as you can predict plethora of things. - When is someone sleeping. - When they're working,etc. - If two person are talking to each other in closed group.

Did something similar in 2015, there was even an open-source program to do it with graphical statistics:

https://maikel.pro/blog/en-whatsapp-privacy-options-are-illu...

Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#42

Post by Eun »

peterjmag wrote: post #31
IneffablePigeon wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can absolutely hide it - it's in the settings, as mentioned in the article. The tradeoff is you won't be able to see anyone else's status. I do agree I don't particularly like that it's on by default.

The parent commenter is talking about the "currently online" indicator, which can't be disabled. From a (strangely worded) WhatsApp doc: > Please note you can't hide your online. https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/about-last-seen-and-o...

That’s one of the reasons I jailbreaked my phone, to be able to control which app can access which data and when.

Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#43

Post by Item_Boring »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #18
sdevonoes wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this a "security" issue? People know that other people can see their "last seen" date, but usually they don't care so they left it. Hell, I leave it public as well. I couldn't care less about this tiny details. Now, if you tell me that by leaving public my "last seen" date, people can get more data about me (e.g., with whom I talk to), well then yes, I would call that a security issue.

> if [...] people can get more data about me (e.g., with whom I talk to) [...] It's quite possible, at least among mutual friends. If you have 2 people you know, who are also friends with each other, who have high correlation of online times, then, it's a signal that they could be talking with each other. It's also amusing (insert a better verb...) that Facebook probably knows who's dating who based on frequency of m…

Reminds me of this talk: Spiegel Mining at the C3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YpwsdRKt8Q

Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#44

Post by lxgr »

hiq wrote: post #39
lxgr wrote: post #38

Is there any chance that the client needs the online status for some internal optimization, e.g. in order to deliver messages for online contacts to a different server than those destined for offline contacts? I could imagine delivery paths to be quite different (one would be immediately passed through in-memory while the other would be stored in some database and potentially trigger mobile push notifications). In th…

In any case there cannot be a good reason to share the online status / last seen date before any interaction has happened between two contacts, and approved by the receiver. If you have had no interaction with someone, you should first accept a message (and not report it as spam) before this information is shared. Ideally that would be the default as well for the About field and the profile picture.

I definitely agree – none of my hypotheses make for a good reason. I'm just wondering if there's anything technical behind what seems to be a quite stubborn decision that also sticks out (as everything else has controllable privacy options).

Another weird decision is that read receipts are not possible to be deactivated in group chats, but there is no explanation for that that I could think of (delivery receipts might be required for faster encryption key ratcheting, but the read status has no significance at all for the protocol).

Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#45

Post by dec0dedab0de »

gridder wrote: post #22
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only used WhatsApp for a year or so to talk to a specific person, but it definitely felt like a chat client to me. My general impression is that it is a lesser version of AIM but using phone numbers as logins. To be fair, I think of all instant messaging apps as lesser versions of AIM, and I still can't believe AOL dropped the ball so hard on that. I don't remember the online indication, is that only when you're ac…

When you are online anyone can check it. There is no option to hide the online status. Using an easy script anyone can then spy and understand pretty much everything of a person, or a group. This is easy cyber stalking and dangerous. Especially because normal people do not understand this and think that hiding last seen is useful to avoid being stalked…

Do you mean any one of your contacts? or anyone who has your phone number? And I'm still confused about the definition of "online" and how that can give anyone an understanding of you.

Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#46

Post by femiagbabiaka »

puttycat wrote: post #14

I've been using WhatsApp for years, reluctantly since it is the de-facto SMS standard in my country. I will never, ever, understand the "online" status feature. It is ridiculously invasive and cannot ever be turned off or even hidden from specific contacts. This is a SMS client, not a chat client, and revealing a user's online status is highly problematic both socially and security-wise. I can't help but wonder how m…

With Android phones you could possibly use an app like NoRoot Firewall to cut off net access for the app when you want to appear offline. Unfortunately that's a pretty "advanced" use of apps for the average consumer and definitely not a replacement for building this in natively.

Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#47

Post by lxgr »

computator wrote: post #5

> Privacy setting for Last Seen: Set by default to Everyone and nobody configures it. It surprised me that only 10% of his random (French) sample is active daily (179/1751=10%). In my contacts, I do see people who have accounts but haven't used it in weeks, but it's not the norm. However, I see lots of people in my contacts who show no info for Last Seen. Is he underestimating how often people configure the privacy s…

At least in my group of friends (which is probably a very bad sample), hiding "last seen" is very common.

I really dearly wish there was one for the online status as well, and I'm glad to have spent my teenage years in a time where SMS was the norm, where neither read receipts nor online status was available. It made for a much more relaxed messaging experience (which iMessage seems to be much better at approximating).

Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#49

Post by zuppy »

Eun wrote: post #42
peterjmag wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent commenter is talking about the "currently online" indicator, which can't be disabled. From a (strangely worded) WhatsApp doc: > Please note you can't hide your online. https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/about-last-seen-and-o...

That’s one of the reasons I jailbreaked my phone, to be able to control which app can access which data and when.

your answer doesn’t make any sense in this context. this is a standard whatsapp feature that can not be turned off. you can disable networking and open whatsapp and that flag will not be sent, but also your conversations won’t get updated. jailbreaking doesn’t change any of this.
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