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Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

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Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#411

Post by probably_wrong »

mgraczyk wrote: post #298
RajT88 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meta lies about all kinds of other things. No reason not to now - they seem to have paid very little penalty so far for getting caught.

Is there any evidence Meta has ever intentionally lied about anything? Like do you have any examples?

From https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-whatsapp-merger-europea...

The European Commission has found that Facebook provided “misleading information” about its 2014 takeover of WhatsApp following an investigation into the deal.

The commission’s complaint relates specifically to the sharing of user data between Facebook and WhatsApp. In a submission to the EU made in August 2014, Facebook said it would not be possible to create a reliable automated system for matching users. In August 2016, WhatsApp announced that it would be linking WhatsApp user phone numbers with Facebook user identities.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#412

Post by gerash »

msgodel wrote: post #69
reillyse wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USA created the current Iranian regime by installing a puppet and then getting butt hurt when their puppet was ousted. A real freedom for us tyranny for you situation. Then the USA created the Saddam regime in Iraq to fight the Iranian regime and that went great. And now the USA is supporting Israel to terrorize the Middle East in their name and with their bombs and that’s going swimmingly too. Top job everyone.

It seems like an infinite pit we throw money and lives into only to make things worse.

what even is the point other than "the Israel lobby said so"? Creating "liberal democracies" is certainly not it or else an ISIS mercenary wouldn't have been installed in place of Bashar al asad?

US itself is not a representative democracy either.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#413

Post by consumer451 »

mgraczyk wrote: post #407
consumer451 wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha. This is why the best lawyers in the world work for these people. Over drinks, when I brought up some of the blatant dark patterns in the ad market, someone who worked at one of the biggest companies in the world responded to me bluntly: "yeah, sure, but have we ever lost a case in court over click fraud? No, we have not."

Dark patterns aren't lies though... And you're not even talking about Meta

Just to be a bit more clear, this was a while ago. The answer in gp was to the question: "hey, I am not an ads guy, but my friend asked me to look at his account, and he had no geo restriction set. Why did 60% of his clicks for 'barn wedding venue east tennesse' come from Malaysia? Why would so many people from there see that, and click on in it?"

The bragging wasn't about their lawyers' ability in court, it was about their lawyers' ability to draft Terms and Conditions such that they could not be caught in a lie.

And yes, not Meta in this story, but come on.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#414

Post by closewith »

fcpk wrote: post #399
closewith wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBF, no-one's as-yet found a Meta binary doing this.

you mean things like having a localhost server running on android service to bypass tracking restrictions and run all of your stuff illegally?

Well, yes, they have been found to bypass tracking restrictions, most recently using Local Mess (https://localmess.github.io/), but they haven't been found exfiltrating WhatsApp private keys or messages in plaintext. And people are looking for this specifically.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#415

Post by ngruhn »

mousethatroared wrote: post #283
ngruhn wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea whether that estimate is accurate but 3 years doesn't sound long for an existential risk. If a large astroid hits earth in 3 years, I better do something now. Should probably have invaded 10 years ago.

Bibi has been saying that Iran is weeks away from the bomb since the 80s. Meanwhile, he's the only megalomaniac in the region with a Bomb.

so you think they're not trying to get a nuke?

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#416

Post by gerash »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #102
Aloisius wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What puppet did the US install?

They’re being dramatic. We installed the Shah [EDIT: as an autocrat] with the ‘53 coup [1]. That was our original sin. But the Islamic Republic wasn’t an American creation. Neither was Saddam’s Iraq or the Mujahideen or Al Qaeda. We variously facilitated, opposed and ignored these elements, mostly the last. Ignoring the Soviet history in the region, together with the fact that Iranians aren’t automatons, but human be…

[flagged]

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#417

Post by miki123211 »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #230
miki123211 wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how popular WhatsApp is, it's very hard to believe that there are no security researchers reverse-engineering its crypto code. Because WhatsApp uses end-to-end encryption, any backdoor must necessarily be on the client side, and all client-side code can ultimately be reverse-engineered. This makes such backdoors very tricky to implement. With that said, while I think a "general backdoor" (one that weakens…

> any backdoor must necessarily be on the client side True, but it might be a part of an update that only hits a white-list of users, so you won't find the actual code that steals your private keys if you're on that list.

This is not allowed as far as I know, at least on iOS.

iOS apps aren't allowed to run arbitrary code that hasn't been signed by Apple. What goes in the AppStore is what runs on your device, and apps are physically incapable of writing data to executable memory. Safari / the built-in Javascript interpreter (and I guess third-party browsers in the EU) are notable exceptions here, as they need JIT.

Sure, Apple could develop special infrastructure to push fake updates to a predesignated list of targets, but at that point, you don't even need collaboration from Meta, and open source apps like Signal are just as vulnerable.

If Apple was willing to go that way, they wouldn't even need to bother with app updates. Ultimately, your messaging history has to be stored on your device in a way that your device can decrypt, and Apple could just steal that info.

I can't speak to what the situation is like on Android, but I presume similar mechanisms exist.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#418

Post by rdm_blackhole »

gspencley wrote: post #41
msgodel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we toppling all these foreign governments and creating instability that breads terrorism in places that otherwise have nothing to do with us? This seems so exceptionally counter productive.

> Why are we toppling all these foreign governments I don't want to speak to the other foreign governments, and I think there is a LOT of room for healthy criticism of how the USA handles its foreign policy, past & present. But to answer the question directly with respects to Iran, specifically: the leadership has been repeatedly chanting "Death To America" for its 45 year history and have been actively trying to dev…

> If there is ever any moral justification for going to war - that's it. It's defensive. That's arguably the only justification for going to war.

Russia considers that Ukraine being part of NATO is an existential threat to it's territorial safety. Therefore it has invaded Ukraine. Was that justified then? After all this was a defensive move that was meant to keep a buffer between Russia and NATO.

If all you need to do to justify a war is to have a defensive moral justification and because we agree that the best defense is offense, then ergo war is peace.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#419

Post by mFixman »

nine_k wrote: post #118
SSLy wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the diaspora seems to overwhelmingly do so, at least.

The diaspora is a very self-filtered subset though. Say, the Russian diaspora overwhelmingly opposes the Russia's aggression in Ukraine, while the population within Russia is mostly indifferent enough, and often supports it. (Note that all the Russian troops in Ukraine are not taken by military draft, but went to war voluntarily, for a generous fee, or in exchange for release from prison.)

The Syrian diaspora overwhelmingly opposed Assad while its population seemed to support the regime... until it fell in 2024.

I wouldn't put any weight on how much the population of a autocratic country pretend to support its regime.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#420

Post by rdm_blackhole »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #12
ty6853 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iraq and Gaza was an absolute joke compared to what it would take to topple the Iranian militants, militias, and government. Much of the terrain is similar to Afghanistan. Tribal islamic alliances are resilient against loss of central governance. There is a massive porous mountainous border to 2+ countries that conceivably will look the other way for certain islamic militants. I know everyone wants to gobble down the…

> Iraq and Gaza was an absolute joke compared to what it would take to topple the Iranian militants, militias, and government It wouldn't be a cake walk. But America could topple the government in Tehran about as easily as it did in Baghdad or, frankly, Kabul. The problem in Iraq and Afghanistan wasn't a failure to decapitate the opposing state. It was in filling the vacuum that left.

> It was in filling the vacuum that left.

Maybe this was a question that should have been asked before these regimes were toppled but nobody bothered so here we are. Instead the US and it's allies come in with their big boots and try to give people "democracy" without thinking that maybe this is just not the right thing to do at this time. But we know better right?

As if there aren't enough problems in the US and in Europe, we need to keep involving ourselves with conflicts that mostly do not concern us. This is a conflict in the middle east and the countries of this region should be in charge of trying to find a solution to it.

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