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Facebook reportedly researching ways to use encrypted WhatsApp messages for ads
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Re: Facebook reportedly researching ways to use encrypted WhatsApp messages for ads
#62> Update: Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, has tweeted in response to The Information's report that WhatsApp is not exploring the use of homomorphic encryption. Cathcart states that there should be skepticism of "technical claims that apps like ours could see messages in "good" cases only." There is no way to match advertising keywords in encrypted content without also allowing matches of arbitrary keywords, at which…
> There is no way to match advertising keywords in encrypted content Complete tangent, since this has nothing to do with what Facebook are looking into here, but: If you control both ends of the connection (like Facebook does in WhatsApp), you can match on advertising keywords securely. By doing it client-side, after the text is decrypted. As I understand it, this is essentially what Apple's iAds framework does: all…
I think Telegram does that. I had someone send me a message about our video call we had that day and in the same minute I suddenly received a message from Telegram about their video call features
Re: Facebook reportedly researching ways to use encrypted WhatsApp messages for ads
#63While from a technology point of view this is very interesting, I would really prefer an option to pay a reasonable subscription fee to have adverts turned off for me. Before Facebook bought WhatsApp it actually used to require a small annual fee, but it was removed. Alas, I fear that as tends be the case with advertising companies, they know that the willing to pay users are the most valuable advert audience, so are…
Visually seeing ads is usually not the biggest problem, although there are issues with too many ads (bandwidth, bad UX) and the security risk of malicious stuff embedded in ads.
The issue (for me), and I think for many people, is the quantity and nature of the data that is collected, and the total lack of oversight for its sharing and usage.
Also, no company will ever remove you from the tracking/data pool just because you're a paying customer. Why would they? Now they can extract revenue from you in two ways!
Re: Facebook reportedly researching ways to use encrypted WhatsApp messages for ads
#64I just wish AdTech companies had a system where you could fill out an extensive form, where you openly state what your preferences are, because the targeting seems very skewed and wrong, at least from what I've experienced. Facebook thinks I like rock music, but I really like house music. Facebook thinks I eat meat, but I am a vegan. Facebook thinks I like cars, but I don't even drive. There's no way of telling Faceb…
There's a growing base of evidence in both the US and the Netherlands (from news media websites, I believe), that targeted advertising is effectively a bubble, and didn't yield higher metrics or revenues. In fact I believe in a couple of examples, they saw higher growth and revenues from ads by going totally non-targeted.
There's an entire sector now focused on trying to hyper-target ads, on the presumed basis they're more effective. If the house of cards falls down, and people realise untargeted ads perform better without all that extra cost, things could get interesting.
Unfortunately it isn't as simple as that, as "independent" audience measurement seems to still be a requirement that leads to adtech type solutions emerging.
To go back to your observation about the quality of targeting though, this shows in a way that it simply doesn't work... The trouble is advertisers continue to throw money at the services falsely claiming to have these accurate data-driven targeting models, without seemingly ever thinking to cross-validate them to be sure they aren't absolute nonsense of false claims of targeting demographics - your ones having entirely the opposite of Boolean demographics show how wild it can be.
I fetched my data from Spotify and the limited data they had (in theory objective data) was chronically wrong - they had tried to put me into a group based on phone network used, but it didn't even get that right, despite that being trivial to do(!)
Re: Facebook reportedly researching ways to use encrypted WhatsApp messages for ads
#65> Update: Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, has tweeted in response to The Information's report that WhatsApp is not exploring the use of homomorphic encryption. Cathcart states that there should be skepticism of "technical claims that apps like ours could see messages in "good" cases only." There is no way to match advertising keywords in encrypted content without also allowing matches of arbitrary keywords, at which…
> There is no way to match advertising keywords in encrypted content Complete tangent, since this has nothing to do with what Facebook are looking into here, but: If you control both ends of the connection (like Facebook does in WhatsApp), you can match on advertising keywords securely. By doing it client-side, after the text is decrypted. As I understand it, this is essentially what Apple's iAds framework does: all…
> The iAd framework then collects just the impression metrics — how many times each ad was shown to a given user — and then every-so-often batches those metrics out to Apple's servers.
If Apple knows how many times you were shown each ad, and which keywords are associated with that ad, then they are able to reconstruct which keywords appeared in your encrypted chat, and how often.
Re: Facebook reportedly researching ways to use encrypted WhatsApp messages for ads
#66People are discussing a lot of advanced encryption in this thread, but the much more simpler explanation is that they will do the ad processing client side where the messages are already in plain text.
Exactly. They don't have to "break" the E2EE design. Simply make use of the "end device" to analyse the contents and feed that into their advertising profile for the user(s). TBH I am surprised they're not already doing that?
How about decrypting the messages on the device and then sending them for ad classification to a remote service? Sounds like a no-brainer.
Re: Facebook reportedly researching ways to use encrypted WhatsApp messages for ads
#67> Update: Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, has tweeted in response to The Information's report that WhatsApp is not exploring the use of homomorphic encryption. Cathcart states that there should be skepticism of "technical claims that apps like ours could see messages in "good" cases only." There is no way to match advertising keywords in encrypted content without also allowing matches of arbitrary keywords, at which…
> There is no way to match advertising keywords in encrypted content Complete tangent, since this has nothing to do with what Facebook are looking into here, but: If you control both ends of the connection (like Facebook does in WhatsApp), you can match on advertising keywords securely. By doing it client-side, after the text is decrypted. As I understand it, this is essentially what Apple's iAds framework does: all…
>Of course, this means that advertisers need to be able to trust Apple's impression reporting;
And that is why it won't work for Facebook. They have already been caught lying about impressions in a way that ended up destroying companies.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/fac...
Re: Facebook reportedly researching ways to use encrypted WhatsApp messages for ads
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no way to match advertising keywords in encrypted content Complete tangent, since this has nothing to do with what Facebook are looking into here, but: If you control both ends of the connection (like Facebook does in WhatsApp), you can match on advertising keywords securely. By doing it client-side, after the text is decrypted. As I understand it, this is essentially what Apple's iAds framework does: all…
I think Telegram does that. I had someone send me a message about our video call we had that day and in the same minute I suddenly received a message from Telegram about their video call features
Unless you were using a secret chat, telegram isn’t e2e encrypted. So there’s no need for them to implement keyword detection on the client side.
Re: Facebook reportedly researching ways to use encrypted WhatsApp messages for ads
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no way to match advertising keywords in encrypted content Complete tangent, since this has nothing to do with what Facebook are looking into here, but: If you control both ends of the connection (like Facebook does in WhatsApp), you can match on advertising keywords securely. By doing it client-side, after the text is decrypted. As I understand it, this is essentially what Apple's iAds framework does: all…
> The iAd framework then collects just the impression metrics — how many times each ad was shown to a given user — and then every-so-often batches those metrics out to Apple's servers. If Apple knows how many times you were shown each ad, and which keywords are associated with that ad, then they are able to reconstruct which keywords appeared in your encrypted chat, and how often.
that's why they're pre-cached in theory, so they don't have to know.
if you're saying you can't trust the closed source implementation, then yeah
Re: Facebook reportedly researching ways to use encrypted WhatsApp messages for ads
#70People are discussing a lot of advanced encryption in this thread, but the much more simpler explanation is that they will do the ad processing client side where the messages are already in plain text.
Exactly. They don't have to "break" the E2EE design. Simply make use of the "end device" to analyse the contents and feed that into their advertising profile for the user(s). TBH I am surprised they're not already doing that?
Wouldn't that still be a privacy violation? The messages themselves would be protected, but advertising companies would receive a constant stream of keywords or categories over time.