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WhatsApp just downloaded 12k photos of other people's information on my phone

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Re: WhatsApp just downloaded 12k photos of other people's information on my phone

#3

Post by kmarc »

rex_lupi wrote: post #2

Why should I believe them?(OP)

Someone mentioned on the reddit thread that after 200+ comments noone actually questioned if the story is true.

On HN, there is one comment, and it does question if it's true. GOOD!

I am curious if it's real or not. My bet is it's not. It's easy to screw up some downloading logic with overflows, one-off errors etc, but since WA is E2E encrypted, it would need a lot more "accident" in code to make this possible.

Re: WhatsApp just downloaded 12k photos of other people's information on my phone

#4

Post by mns »

kmarc wrote: post #3
rex_lupi wrote: post #2

Why should I believe them?(OP)

Someone mentioned on the reddit thread that after 200+ comments noone actually questioned if the story is true. On HN, there is one comment, and it does question if it's true. GOOD! I am curious if it's real or not. My bet is it's not. It's easy to screw up some downloading logic with overflows, one-off errors etc, but since WA is E2E encrypted, it would need a lot more "accident" in code to make this possible.

But this is about backups and the fact that this guy bought a new phone and started a data restore for Whatsapp from GoogleDrive, what if something is wrong there, maybe the backups are not even encrypted, even though everyone thinks they are.

Re: WhatsApp just downloaded 12k photos of other people's information on my phone

#5

Post by nvartolomei »

This made me think about the case of mobile network operators recycling phone numbers. How does WhatsApp handle that? What about Telegram which isn’t e2e encrypted and stores everything on their servers by default?

There are operators recycling numbers after less than a year of inactivity/zero balance on pre paid SIMs.

Re: WhatsApp just downloaded 12k photos of other people's information on my phone

#8

Post by MarcellusDrum »

mns wrote: post #4
kmarc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone mentioned on the reddit thread that after 200+ comments noone actually questioned if the story is true. On HN, there is one comment, and it does question if it's true. GOOD! I am curious if it's real or not. My bet is it's not. It's easy to screw up some downloading logic with overflows, one-off errors etc, but since WA is E2E encrypted, it would need a lot more "accident" in code to make this possible.

But this is about backups and the fact that this guy bought a new phone and started a data restore for Whatsapp from GoogleDrive, what if something is wrong there, maybe the backups are not even encrypted, even though everyone thinks they are.

WhatsApp does claim that Google Drive/iCloud backups are encrypted by default. [1]

> ... With end-to-end encrypted backup, you can also add that same layer of protection to your backup on iCloud or Google Drive.

[1]: https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/chats/about-end-to-end-encr...

Re: WhatsApp just downloaded 12k photos of other people's information on my phone

#10

Post by Spare_account »

rex_lupi wrote: post #2

Why should I believe them?(OP)

A second redditor has reported the same behaviour, although it's in the same (seemingly inappropriate) subreddit and was posted 4 hours later so it may just be a copycat:

https://old.reddit.com/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/ry0cnr/d...

https://web.archive.org/web/20220107101132/https://old.reddi...

Edit: The thread has now been deleted, so both reddit threads about this issue are deleted.

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