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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

#81

Post by canadianfella »

beckman466 wrote: post #72
harperlee wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a SMS client, not a chat client That is a subjective take that's mainly in your head. WhatsApp is a client for chatting, so it is a chat client. It does not use the SMS network, so it is not an SMS client. Some countries such as US and France had free SMS services, that enabled it to be used as chat. Other places SMS being costly it was used as a "write ideally one message" functionality, similar to email (…

> That is a subjective take that's mainly in your head. Wow that’s gaslighty

How so?

Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#82

Post by murukesh_s »

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…

Not sure if its country wise or only in newer versions, but you can turn off last seen and read receipt as well. go to account -> privacy if its available or try to upgrade.

Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#83

Post by matheusmoreira »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #20
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…

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…

> I'm trying to think of a situation where either could ruin someones life but I'm struggling.

Ruining someone's life might be hyperbole but people certainly notice when the people they're messaging are online. Especially when they send messages and are ignored.

Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#84

Post by young_unixer »

temp667 wrote: post #75
gridder wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

" understand pretty much everything of a person, or a group." How does this work - does it leak status or location, messages, contact lists etc? We have a number of folks who are absolutely freaking out over how folks are being killed because of this - can someone walk us through how it leaks all this info? A quick note that I make my entire calendar public in terms of available times so that folks can schedule their…

> We have a number of folks who are absolutely freaking out over how folks are being killed because of this

I can totally see that happening:

Person X suspects their partner is cheating on them with Person Y. So they start logging every time their partner is online and every time Person Y is online. Person X becomes obsessed with this theory of cheating and discovers a correlation between their online times, concluding that they're being cheated on, so they explode in rage and go kill their partner.

Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#86

Post by gsich »

jorislacance wrote: post #66
gsich wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Nice work !

Not mine if that was not clear.

Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#87

Post by dec0dedab0de »

rpadovani wrote: post #62
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Anyone with your number, and it reports when you have the application open. Assuming WhatsApp is the first and last app you open in the day (good morning and good night messages) you know how long a person sleeps, and this is only a very easy analysis you can do. I am sure you can find something more interesting recording when people open an app.

OK, yeah I agree that should be configurable, or at least limited to contacts. Maybe it should only count as online if you're actively using the app instead of having it open in the background. I'm sure many people just have it open 24/7. If I still used it, I would want an option to only receive messages when I'm online.

Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#89

Post by LambdaComplex »

beckman466 wrote: post #72
harperlee wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is a SMS client, not a chat client That is a subjective take that's mainly in your head. WhatsApp is a client for chatting, so it is a chat client. It does not use the SMS network, so it is not an SMS client. Some countries such as US and France had free SMS services, that enabled it to be used as chat. Other places SMS being costly it was used as a "write ideally one message" functionality, similar to email (…

> That is a subjective take that's mainly in your head. Wow that’s gaslighty

It's gaslighty to say that a client that does not use SMS is not an SMS client?

Re: Tracking the WhatsApp habits of random smartphones

#90

Post by dec0dedab0de »

zuppy wrote: post #49
Eun wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you have root you could decrypt the traffic on the fly, and block any data that is not necessary for basic functionality. Maybe even run squid locally, and configure it there. I doubt that's what they meant, and it would take a bit of reverse engineering, but would be kind of fun.
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