Hi all. We've been playing a silly little game with my wife lately: we send each other messages about some topic we never talk about and then wait for ads related to our conversation to start showing up in Instagram. As of the last month, they never fail to show up.<p>Please keep in mind that this is a conversation between two "personal" accounts, no business accounts involved. More so, we haven't accepted the new terms of use that "allowed" WhatsApp to access messages between personal accounts and business accounts.<p>Is WhatsApp scanning personal messages to target their ads as we are noticing? Weren't WhatsApp messages end to end encrypted? Is this a violation of their Terms of Use or am I missing something silly?
I think you partly may just be biased by happening to notice ads more if they fit the topic you sent to your wife or being lenient in deciding if ads meet the categorization. And if you dwell on an ad because it seems to match, you may get more similar ads.<p>Here is how I think you could design a more robust (but less fun) experiment:<p>- Come up with a bunch of topics, write them down on slips of paper, put the paper into a hat<p>- Each Monday, draw three topics from the hat, send some WhatsApp messages about the first, Messenger messages about the second, and don’t discuss the third. Don’t put the topics back in the hat.<p>- If you see any ads relating to one of the topics, screenshot them and save screenshots to eg your computer with a bit of the topic<p>- Separately, record which topic went to which platform<p>- After doing this for a while, go through the screenshots and (each of you and your wife or ideally other people) give a rating for how well the ad matches the topic. To avoid bias, you shouldn’t know which app saw the topic.<p>- Now work out average ratings / the distribution across the three products (WhatsApp vs Messenger vs none) and compare
(wrt some comments in this thread)<p>Is it so hard to believe that Meta is snooping on WhatsApp conversations? Meta, a company of unprecedented size that was built over monetizing your private data? A company who's been caught in plenty of scandals (like Cambridge Analytic) about this exact sort of thing (violating their users' privacy)?<p>Someone from this community, which generally means educated, tech-literate and sensitive to these topics shares a perfectly plausible observation, of something that has been experienced as well by plenty of other folks, me included; and then some people come and try to make up the most convoluted explanations (candy boxes from Kazakhstan just happened to be trending that specific day, nothing to see here, move along!) to this phenomena and try to shift the blame away from Meta. Why do you do this? Are you Meta employees? A PR agency they hired?<p>It's just baffling. Apparently some people DO want to be abused.<p>Plot twist: we all get ads about candy boxes from KZ now.
As someone who has actually worked on end to end encryption at Meta, I can tell you I am not aware of anything where the company reads your WhatsApp messages - either in transit or device. The company takes fairly serious measures to ensure it cannot even accidentally infer such contents.<p>I don't know what is happening in this specific case. Perhaps the ads came from some other similar search queries. Perhaps they came from the keyboard intercepting what was typed. Or perhaps something else that I can't think of. But I'm nearly certain it did not come from meta intercepting the contents of your messages.<p>It's hard to convince people at this point because many have lost trust in Meta as a company, and I understand that. But I still find it stunning that so many people are making so many false claims without any actual knowledge to back it up.
Just because that the messages might be sent end-to-end encrypted from Sue to Joe does not mean Meta cannot read them.<p>Meta has control over the app Sue uses. So they could send them to Meta unencrypted in addition to sending them to Joe in an encrypted fashion.<p>Or they just extract the relevant terms:<p>Sue->Joe: "Hello Joe, I'm so excited! We are going to have a baby! Let's call it Dingbert. You're not the father! Jim is. I hope you don't mind too much!".<p>Sue->Meta: "Sue will have a baby"<p>Insta->Sue: "Check out these cute baby clothes!"
Instead of speculating whether something like this could or could not be true, there should be a way to test it scientifically.<p>* Have pairs of mobile devices set up from factory configuration with WhatsApp and Instagram installed.<p>* Simulate conversations between each pair from select topics.<p>* Collect all ads from Instagram after the WhatsApp conversations from each device.<p>* Categorize ads to broad topics.<p>* Search for significant bias.<p>There are probably a lot of factors I'm missing here, and it's probably easy to introduce bias when there is none there. For example it's probably a good idea that a different person categorizes the ads into topics than the person handling the specific phone, otherwise the person might bias the categorization of the ads based on the conversation they had on WhatsApp beforehand. The person categorizing the ads should have no knowledge of the WhatsApp conversation
that happened on the phone. The devices should probably be on different networks. There is probably a lot that I am missing here.
The scarier thing to me is when ads match _conversations_ I have with my wife. I told her about this story this morning, and she reminded me about a conversation about stem cell research we had yesterday. I said something along the lines of 'I hope there is a breakthrough soon on regenerating the Isle of Langerhans in the pancreas to treat diabetes.' Sure enough, she noticed an article in her Google News feed later that day related to diabetes.<p>Once or twice may be a coincidence. Maybe. But this happens regularly and with startling specificity.<p>What could be listening? I'm a technologist like the rest of you. I know apps need permissions to the mic, I know it's not easy for an app to stay in the foreground. Is it my Roku? My smart TV?<p>Makes one want to go full Richard Stallman.<p>p.s. my wife just said it would be really funny if Google News showed an article now on people worrying about their tech listening to their conversations. I'll post an update if that happens...
Some options:<p>1. Nobody is reading your WA messages, the same topics can be learned from your browsing activity or other msgs, eg. by reading your sms texts.<p>2. Meta is reading your messages directly in-transit, server-side.<p>3. Meta is not reading your messages server-side, but the Meta apps extract keywords from your conversations and request relevant ads from the ad servers.<p>4. Another non-Meta app is doing the above.<p>5...
Whatsapp FAQ:<p>WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption is used when you chat with another person using WhatsApp Messenger. End-to-end encryption ensures only you and the person you're communicating with can read or listen to what is sent, and nobody in between, not even WhatsApp. This is because with end-to-end encryption, your messages are secured with a lock, and only the recipient and you have the special key needed to unlock and read them. All of this happens automatically: no need to turn on any special settings to secure your messages.<p><a href="https://faq.whatsapp.com/791574747982248" rel="nofollow">https://faq.whatsapp.com/791574747982248</a>
IANAL of course, but you should read the ToS carefully and you will probably find something that allows them to read your messages anyway.<p>e2e encryption doesn't forbid to read the messages as you type or read them or read a screenshot of the screen or whatever they can do inside an app :P<p>They were caught activating your camera by "error" a while ago <a href="https://www.macrumors.com/2019/11/12/facebook-bug-camera-background-access/" rel="nofollow">https://www.macrumors.com/2019/11/12/facebook-bug-camera-bac...</a><p>As per the experiment you did...<p>We did the same experiment with a female friend a while ago. We started talking about her pregnancy (a topic we never touched, as she was single and of course not pregnant) in a group chat, specifically targeting her. Sure enough, after a couple of days her fb and instagram were full of strolley ads (but not ours) :)
One explanation I've heard for mysterious "We were talking about it in person but nothing else" ads, is that if you were connecting to the internet from the same Wi-Fi access point or IP address as someone else that did a web search on the topic or visited websites on the topic, it has connected you by way of shared internet connection.<p>Is it possible something like that happened?<p>In general, while anything is possible, my own occam's razor calculation is that if someone <i>does</i> have a way to get through ostensibly end-to-end encrypted messages, it's going to be government actors saving it for law enforcement/national security purposes. They wouldn't "waste" it on ad targetting. And if it's being secretly used for ad targeting so many people would know about it, people who aren't disciplined military bound by law to secrecy, that it would be quite likely to get out and be revealed and no longer secret.
WhatsApp Privacy Policy:<p>How We Work With Other Meta Companies<p>As part of the Meta Companies, WhatsApp receives information from, and shares information (see here) with, the other Meta Companies. We may use the information we receive from them, and they may use the information we share with them, to help operate, provide, improve, understand, customize, support, and market our Services and their offerings, including the Meta Company Products. This includes:<p>...<p>- improving their services and your experiences using them, such as making suggestions for you (for example, of friends or group connections, or of interesting content), personalizing features and content, helping you complete purchases and transactions, and showing relevant offers and ads across the Meta Company Products; and
What's scarier than secretly reading messages is the idea that we are being manipulated into believing that we thought of the "random item" all on our own, instead of it being cleverly triggered by a series of manipulative ads or posts from friends.<p>Or, a similar idea is that ad companies don't really need to know anything about you so long as all your friends are "unprotected".<p>For example, you may pick "lawn furniture" as your "totally random" item to test WhatsApp. What you don't remember is that a good friend mentioned lawn furniture to you 3 days ago and just did 14 web searches on Google and FB marketplace to find some. They have strong metadata ties to you, so you get served ads on that topic too.
I'm sorry, but this feels like a highly irresponsible FUD post to me. (And I am <i>not</i> a fan of Facebook in <i>any</i> way at all, so let's put that out of the way.)<p>For years and years and years, there have been people claiming their voice assistant (for example) is listening in on their conversation to show ads, and so forth. And it's always anecdote, never any hard data.<p>And the thing is, if this were the case, it would be relatively easy to prove with a controlled experiment that other people can replicate. And yet, somehow, magically that <i>never happens</i>.<p>Sure, Google used to algorithmically read your Gmail to show you relevant ads, but they were totally open about that, and then they stopped because it weirded people out anyways.<p>If Facebook were mining Whatsapp messages for ad topics, they'd <i>probably</i> be as open about it as Google was, out of pure self-interest. Because right now so much of their advertising is about how Whatsapp is trustworthy because it's E2EE etc. So if they were secretly analyzing messages, it would blow up the reputation of their main marketing message. There's a good chance it would be business suicide for Whatsapp. A profit-driven company probably isn't going to take that risk.<p>To be honest, this post feels social-engineered by a messaging competitor or something. I'm not saying it <i>is</i>, but the personal touch ("silly little game with my wife"), the innocent questioning ("Is... or am I missing something silly?"), and the total lack of any objective evidence (e.g. screenshots of messages and ads) are all HUGE red flags.<p>If Meta really is doing this, it's pretty easy to prove with hard data, and that's going to become a front-page news story on the New York Times. The fact that that hasn't happened leads me to think it's much more likely there's nothing here.
Assuming you're using a phone, is there a "keyboard app" that could be intercepting things before WhatsApp? other endpoint issues with security? Not that I'd be surprised to see a big company flatly lying about their product, but because they're so big I suspect you need to work hard to eliminate other possibilities before taking them to court.
I am 99% sure Meta/Facebook have secretly broken WhatsApp e2e encryption by adding a second key to all users.<p>I have security code change notifications enabled, and around November 4, 2021 a large number of my unrelated contacts suddenly had security code changes. There wasn’t any media reporting at the time, but I remember some others mentioning it on Reddit[0] (would love if anyone here can scroll back in their message history and look for security code changes around the same time - maybe we can finally shine some light on this).<p>Since then I have assumed they are flat out lying about the fact that “not even WhatsApp can read your messages” (direct quote from the iOS app).<p>Also note that both iMessage and WhatsApp strongly encourage you to enable iCloud backups, which are not e2e encrypted and readable by Apple (Apple only claim backups are “encrypted” and that messages are “e2e” encrypted):<p><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/whatsapp-imessage-facebook-apple-fbi-privacy-1261816/" rel="nofollow">https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/what...</a><p>At least Apple are not flat out lying like Meta, but they are still being incredibly deceptive with their marketing.<p>Use Signal if you care about e2e encryption. Everything else is a marketing slight of hand.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsapp/comments/qm2ufw/security_code_changed/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/whatsapp/comments/qm2ufw/security_c...</a>
I'm going to say the same thing I always say when it comes to E2EE.<p>E2EE does not mean <i>anything</i> in a world where both ends are owned by the transport layer.<p>I'm not saying they're doing anything wrong, you could be mistaken and information can be exfiltrated some other way.<p>But: Either you trust the transport layer or you don't. Saying "E2EE means the transport doesn't have to be trusted" while running a neigh impossible to reverse engineer binary on both ends distrubuted <i>by the network</i> --- <i>*is* trusting the network.</i>
I think Meta is reading your messages locally on your device and showing you personalized ads from the messages that are actually on your device. It's not uploaded on Meta's servers and not in anyway breaking the e2ee, because your device is one of the 2 ends. If you don't use Facebook or Instagram on your phone then no personalized ads is shown.<p>Everything above is supposition from something I vaguely remember but not 100% sure.
LOL no need for elaborate MITM efforts if both endpoints are completely closed source and totally powned and corrupted.<p>Of course that reads backwards just as well, no need to implement complicated "end to end encryption" if both endpoints are hopelessly powned.
Every few months someone thinks they've proven that these companies are recording us via our phones, scanning our messages secretly, etc. What's more likely that these companies are going to break the law but manage to keep it a secret that not one engineer who worked on these features speaks out after all the whistleblowers that have come forward or that you're that predictable they can guess what you're wanting/thinking from what you content they already serve you?
I can attest I've seen this behaviour and played this game with a friend. We concocted obscure conversation points e.g "Flamingo statues" and not long after would get ads in the right ballpark of relevance on Instagram. Hard to know if it's nefarious as it could be mere coincidence or confirmation bias.<p>Tangental aside; it still confounds me where the business opportunity of WhatsApp resides for Meta if they "can't" get access to the data.
"WhatsApp's end-to-end encryption is used when you chat with another person using WhatsApp Messenger. End-to-end encryption ensures only you and the person you're communicating with can read or listen to what is sent, and nobody in between, not even WhatsApp"<p>This has always been disingenious.<p>WhatsApp control the client, the client displays the unencrypted message, ergo WhatsApp can read the message.<p>It provably does when it interprets links and does a web page preview card.<p>Also... that is highly likely leaking your advert profile as even if the preview didn't then any visit to the website is outside of WhatsApp and is now tied to your IP, browser cookies, etc.<p>All of the above can be true without end-to-end encryption being broken or otherwise defeated on the server side.
Could it just be confirmation bias? Or could it be that the correlation is the other way around: You see something online, decide to pick that as your topic with your partner (unconciously) and the ads show up because of the initial location you have seen the topic.
That's nothing. I talked to my wife in bed about sex and then immediately received an email selling viagra and cialis. It's crazy, but I think gmail must have put a microphone in my pillow. It's the only way.<p>I was sleepy so when I woke up I tore apart the pillow after brushing my teeth but there was nothing there. They must have taken it out surreptitiously when I was in the bathroom.<p>I know it wasn't my wife because I put her phone in a Faraday cage to stop her from using the Internet when I'm home. Unless... now that I think about it. Unless she's secretly working for Facebook. She said a friend of her's could get her a Portal webcam. No one buys those things unless they're working for Facebook!
For a few years, WhatsApp "e2ee" messages were stored in plain text on your Google drive backup (that's how it worked on Android. Don't know about apple). This was even stated in their FAQ.<p>This was as part of a FB/GOOG deal where the storage for WhatsApp backups did not count for your Google drive quota.<p>Recently the backups did finally become encrypted as well. With a key known to the WhatsApp app. (On Android, stored in a file called "key" in the apps local storage)<p>However, when you restore the backup, where does the key come from? From the WhatsApp servers, obviously.<p>So still, FB and GOOG together still have full access to your daily backed up messages.<p>And the free storage deal is still there, of course.<p>Please do correct me if I'm wrong and you know better.
It's a shame this kind of thing is so hard to prove, otherwise it would be all over the media. People will write it off as 'coincidence'. "Perhaps you looked for or discussed it elsewhere".<p>What happened with Skype before was that Microsoft would ping any links from their servers, so it was really easy to prove it by generating a new web server, publishing it nowhere and then mentioning it in a chat. This caused some publicity and they stopped the practice. Skype didn't guarantee E2EE at that time though.<p>But perhaps you could do a similar 'clean room' excerise to prove it. I don't think they would break the E2E by the way but perhaps there is something calling home in the app itself.
consider the following scenario<p>type a message -> msg encrypted -> msg sent -> msg received -> msg decrypted -> msg viewed in app<p>Then consider the following:<p>type a message -> msg encrypted -> msg sent -> msg received -> msg decrypted -> app scans content and sends classification to ads server -> msg viewed in app<p>Both are end-to-end encrypted.
Whenever you post a link in Whatsapp, the app tries to create a card from the metadata available in the link. The procedure to make the card presumably goes through fb servers and is outside the e2e. Could they be using that?<p>Another hypothesis is that you are taking other steps such as searching for that topic so that you can send something to your wife those extra steps might be enabling tracking.
Well, yeah. Of course lots of companies are targeting us for ads based on data that we lightheartedly assumed was private. It's even possible that they could do this without violating their ever-changing privacy policies. For example, they could say that the programs that review your messages don't retain any personally identifiable information. It might even be true. (Although there's no auditing of this and little or no accountability.)<p>Online ads ... if you've ever paid for one you know they are desperately in need of targeting. We consumers provide our info directly to folks who sell ads, under terms and conditions that we don't understand. Of course they're making use of this free resource. They'd have to be idiots not to.<p>So ... with respect, the wave of denial in the comments here ... 10 years ago, that would have seemed "naive but understandable." Today it's just weird. Almost like some kind of absurdist comedy. It's totally disconnected from the world we actually live in.
The app that you type your message into is controlled by Meta. They can do whatever they want with what you type and THEN encrypt the message and send it to the other person.
WhatsApp make no specific claims about who this encryption is keeping you safe from. And they also require you to agree that they can use your information and interactions for their legitimate business needs. I mean, WhatsApp is standing <i>right there</i> when you stuff the message into the box regardless of how safe the package is in transit once it's left your phone. And consider basically every 'enchancement' to security or privacy around Facebook was done under duress for years. Pre-acquisition WhatsApp is a different story, but that story is ancient history.<p>I didn't agree to the recent WhatApp nor Facebook's TOS so no longer have their product on my devices. I suggest you do the same, or just sit back and enjoy the specialised, relevant, targeted ads, but think twice before each send.
What I desperately want at this point in time:<p>A button next to every ad that says "why me?" that details every byte of my data scraped to generate that specific ad. Was it a GPS location from an hour ago? Did you scan through my photos? Did you figure something out from my youtube watch history? TELL ME!
What types of phones are and your wife using? My personal theory is that a lot of these situations are actually the phone itself (or a third party keyboard app, apps copying clipboard content, etc) doing the “spying” and not WhatsApp somehow bypassing the E2E encryption.
Can someone working on WhatsApp weigh in on this or are there very restrictive NDA's? I would expect it's an interpretation of the TOS, so WhatsApp should be able to communicate if this is a possibility or not.
It is unlikely that Meta is able to decrypt the messages on their side. The WhatsApp desktop client is actually very crippled by the fact that it can’t just ask someone for the messages, it is another participant in end to end encryption and needs the shared keys. If they would defeat end to end encryption they would first implement the desktop client in a more functional and easy way.<p>But it is possible for the client itself to build a map of advertising id -> interests and send that over to meta separately. This would be similar to one of chrome's proposals.
Another idea: test a null hypothesis. Block with your pi-hole or a proxy all the facebook traffic so the messages won't work. Then reproduce with the same exact behavior with your wife (it would be better if you both could get a clean identity and then repeat the exact same conversations and topics, but getting a clean identity is not that easy) so all the external factors are the same except the facebook connection itself. It could be even more granular by trying to block just enough so it won't send the messages, allowing facebook ad trackers, etc.<p>If you try this several times, the messages are not working and the corresponding ads show up you can be sure that it is not because they are reading your messages. Which does not rule out the possibility that they might read them, but at least you can be 100% sure that your ads are not showing up because of your messages in this case.<p>If they do show up you could then try discarding other factors like client-side keyword analysis e.g.: talking about very generic things which are not useful to ad trackers like "how you going?", etc (ie. awkward elevator conversations), but it is harder to test a null hypothesis for client-side keyword analysis.
I'd ask myself another set of questions:
- can they extract information from conversations and exfiltrate it in a stealthy or obfuscated enough way so that they won't be noticed or have plausible deniability
- do they have incentives to do so (assuming the absence of liability described above)
- do they have a track record on related topics that makes you confident in the fact that they wouldn't act that way<p>My answers being yes - yes - no, the question of 'do they listen to target the ads they try to make me display' is pretty irrelevant to me. I can't trust them not to nor check reliably if they do.<p>If you try to address a different question such as 'do they really encrypt reliably to protect your conversations from being snooped on without their authorization', the threat analysis may differ. In that case they have incentives aligned with yours and are probably faithfully trying to effectively protect your/their data.<p>At the end, I'd estimate the probability of the scenario and how I value the consequent loss of privacy. Then accept/mitigate/refuse the risk accordingly.
All these corporation apologists... why wouldn't Meta/Fecesbook do this? You can read about corporate over-reach on a daily basis - and that's just what we find out about. Here are some of todays privacy headlines on the register, right now:<p>Significant customer data exposed in attack on Australian telco - Subscribers have questions – like 'When were you going to tell us?'<p>Boeing to pay SEC $200m to settle charges it misled investors over 737 MAX safety - Ex-CEO also on the hook for $1m after skipping over known software issues<p>Privacy watchdog steps up fight against Europol's hoarding of personal data - If you could stop storing records on people unconnected to any crimes, that would be great<p>Meta accused of breaking the law by secretly tracking iPhone users - Ad goliath reckons complaint is meritless – but it would, wouldn't it?<p>Federal agencies buying Americans' internet data challenged by US senators - Maybe we don't want to go with the netflow, man<p>.. and I'm only halfway through!<p>Did you think the rule of law is there to protect you? Do you think corporations won't break the law to get access to information? Have you learnt nothing?!
I've told you again and again that if you value privacy you don't use WhatsApp, you use Signal.<p>Personally I use Telegram which works fine for me and I have taken a fair amount of flak for saying it is a better choice than WhatsApp.<p>I'll still try again: There is more to security than protocols and algorithms. If you value your privacy, don't use a free messenger from a company with a long record of sleazy behaviour.
Well, even end-to-end encrypted in WhatsApp doesn't eliminate metadata that is being collected about you. Even then, unless you are using a keyboard that is specifically not gathering information, the keyboard you type your message with might be sending keywords/metadata forward. Combine that with the rest of the information being collected about you and whatever you speak about, isn't so secret anymore.<p>It's very easy to blame an application, but the problem with the modern ecosystem is that it's all very interconnected. Signal makes a point of having a setting that sends a request to the keyboard to disable personalized learning, but even that is a request. There isn't a guarantee that it complies.<p>Companies that deal with data will not use a single source of information, but a huge variety of sources and your smartphone is like a huge vacuum that is pulling in everything it can gather from you through any means possible.<p>Lastly, it could also be observation bias as others have mentioned, but to truly be able to regain control, you would need to take a variety of steps to make this change.
try an external source of true randomness for choosing your test topics. choices that seem random to you may be totally predictable.<p>i know that's wild, but also often true. humans are bad at randomness. there may be no direct leak at all of your test topics, they might just be guessable based on everything that is known about you, people like you and things you've been presented or looked at.
Pcaps or it didn't happen.<p>People have been claiming this for years, and yet we have never seen actual evidence. I completely understand being creeped out by the surveillance shops, and I've seen coincidences that weirded me out.<p>But if this is going on, then there is network traffic about it. And busting FB with real proof of audio surveillance would be a massive feather in some researcher's cap.<p>I don't buy it.
I keep being told this is a conspiracy and that several people checked on this and found no evidence of them spying on you, but I still have a hard time believing they're not doing something really sketchy.<p>The case that was the final straw for me was when I was chatting with my partner and remembered a funny song from my childhood, so I opened YouTube on Safari and showed it to her. A couple of minutes later, she opens Instagram (on her own phone) and the first "follow suggestion" is the artist from the song. She had never heard of this song before, much less of the artist (which is not famous at all).<p>I would understand if everything happened on my phone/accounts, but the suggestion was on <i>her phone and account</i>. I don't think they're literally listening to you, but there's definitely a GPS-based user relationship table somewhere which reflects what you do to everyone they think has some connection to you and is physically close to you.
As suggested by others, I would also recommend going one step further and turn this into a proper experiment, e.g.:<p>- systematically record how often this happens, in contrast to other ads, and for each of the reason topics<p>- record for each random topic if you have also mentioned it anywhere else, e.g. in a Google search it some other digital media<p>- make the choice of random topics more random, ie. not depending on current moods (which might be biased through subtle, external nudges<p>-...<p>These are of course just pointers, and by no means a proper experimental setup.<p>I'm aware that this might take the fun out of your playful approach. However, you might be surprised by the results, in whatever direction. Also, it would give you a much more grounded fundament for further discussion. Of course you can just keep doing it the current, less tedious way. I'm only suggesting it because you seem to be interested in the topic and it might be more satisfying for yourselves to turn this into a little citizen science project.
When they say that only "you" have access to read the encrypted message (at the end) could they be being disingenuous with that interpretation?<p>Take this scenario for example:<p>1. E2E is not broken in anyway by Meta/Whatsapp. In this scenario only both WhatsApp clients (and thus you and the other person) have access to the messages. This is required for you to even read the messages in the first place.<p>2. The WhatsApp local instance is running on YOUR device under YOUR username / digital identity. From a legal perspective is it possible that since the app is running under your username that it is also considered "you" ?<p>3. If number 2 is true then it might give the local WhatsApp instance legal shield to read and do anything it wishes (locally) with the message content. And then of course this could be sent separately back to Meta/Whatsapp in a very small format easily mixed in with other traffic.
WhatsApp embeds google analytics into your client, which means that it does tag all your messages while you are viewing them (and also tags them with each open/close of the conversation).<p>If you don't know this already, use App Warden to remove spyware handlers on Android and use RethinkDNS to block their ad domains.
Are you sending each other links or just mentioning the ads in text?<p>If this is just in text—and I'm definitely not defending Meta here—could it also be that the ads you see have got us so figured out already? The topic you choose to talk about may be influenced or seeded by your environment (online/offline), and one thing leads to the other almost deterministically.<p>Here's an experiment: try rolling a die a few times or using a random number generator to pick one word or more from a list like the EFF wordlists [0], and then talk about that exclusively.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/07/new-wordlists-random-passphrases" rel="nofollow">https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/07/new-wordlists-random-p...</a>
First of all: I don't think you're crazy. I also don't think WhatsApp is the one leaking your data.<p>My counter argument: I use WhatsApp all the times and nothing I talk about on it ever shows up in my ads. A hefty amount of adblock may help here, as does the fact I live in the EU where the worst tracking is illegal.<p>Something on your phone is probably leaking data. Most suspect are third party keyboards, accessibility apps, apps with access to your photos and videos, or even Google Assistant. Third party keyboards can easily track what you're typing, accessibility apps can parse what you're saying or typing, and Google Assistant will take a screenshot of your current screen when you invoke it.<p>Other options are clipboard scanning (i.e. on older operating systems) and perhaps link preview services breaking out of e2e.<p>Finding what app is selling your information is difficult. For starts, you don't know which device is leaking. Ad companies are smart enough to see the connection between you and your wife. Her search results alone can probably make ads appear on your device!<p>Also consider the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon. You can only track special topics if you track the topics of all ads and apply some statistical analysis. If you get blasted with ads all day, you'll notice the ones that you're on the lookout for. Pausing your scrolling through the app to take a screenshot will then reinforce the e-stalkers' algorithms.<p>If you have two old phones lying around, try repeating this trick with phones that are completely wiped, without any Google account logged in, with firewalls to block anything but WhatsApp from talking to the internet. I bet you'll find that those devices won't generate ads.<p>Why do I think that? For starters, enthusiasts decompile and analyse WhatsApp APK files all the time, in search for rumours and beta features to report about on tech news sites. If at some point WhatsApp added a secondary information channel about your messages (whose encryption is reasonably proven), reporters would've made a HUGE story out of it. A single line of decompiled code can send tech outlets into a frenzy of Meta accusations and let loose the EU's regulatory commissions for lying to customers. It'd be the scoop of the year!<p>Personally, I think "Google's keyboard or Instagram's gallery scanner is leaking my data" is a lot more likely than "WhatsApp has never been analysed enough to find the magic leaking code".
I see a lot of tinfoil theories in the comments but no one mentioning "url unfurl" capabilities. You send a link, it's encrypted end-to-end, it arrives to the other side, and the link is unfurled for display. Bam, Facebook knows you sent that link.
From first-hand authority, some encrypted/secure apps have client-side feature detection. Leaking features doesn’t count as violating a standard. May be running something like a named entity recognizer or keyword/category recognizer that is “sufficiently” anonymized. This on photos too; of course this can be adjusted for device parameters, battery availability, and geolocation. I cannot speak to WhatsApp specifically, but note this directly from at least one other popular messaging app. I would absolutely assume no encryption exists. Rats in the opera house.
It could be the keyboard on your phone that's essentially keylogging everything you type and sending it to advertisers. I have no idea whether this may have really happened, but it's certainly feasible.
My understanding was always that whatsapp controlled/has access to the key, so they can decrypt anything anyway. It wouldn't be surprising that "end to end" means that it includes you, your partner, and whatsapp.<p>it wouldn't be surprising that whatsapp gleans info from your comms and builds a profile of you, from which ads get injected. whatsapp is not selling your actual comms, but the likelyhood you'd be interested in certain things/products. sort of like how the three names supposedly only store metadata of your calls, not the actual call.
"End to end encrypted" on proprietary code base from META of all companies, with no ability to publicly audit?<p>I am to this day baffled by gullibility of people believing that WhatsApp is E2E encrypted.
Recently I was booking a trip to Finland, so my booking app showed me suggested destinations to other nearby countries like Estonia. That's normal.<p>Then, my friend asked me where do I want to go the most if I am to go scuba diving. I answered "Phillipines". My friend then said "Maldives is also great". We never searched for anything, just casual conversation. A few minutes later I look at my booking app, guess what were the top suggestions - Maldives, followed by Phillipines. Must be coincidence.
If the confidentiality of your messaging is a concern, you shouldn't be using whatsapp anyway or most closed source software. There's mostly no point in speculating, because it will be hard to verify the extent of information leakage from the vendor anyway.<p>It would be better to use signal or element, something that tries to solve the key exchange problem. And if you are even more concerned, run their respective server software on your own hardware. Then you can inspect what goes in and out.
I'm pretty sure even the mics are listening to what we say since for years it's been happening that when I discuss something with my girlfriend ads about it start to show up. We don't even use WhatsApp, didn't search about the said company on Google or Facebook, nothing. We just discuss something about it with our phones on our side and suddently ads start showing up.<p>The fact they are spying on WhatsApp messages isn't really surprising.
I don't think end-to-end encryption means what most people in this thread thinks it means. Yes, it's encrypted between devices. However, when I open Whatsapp on a new device, it pulls all my message history for the last 5 years. I wouldn't be able to do so without the keys. So to facilitate that, they must be storing the keys and sending them over on their end.<p>And if they have the keys then they can still read your messages!
Sure, it's end-to-end encrypted, but it means nothing when Signal, Meta, Apple, Google etc. are conveniently keeping a copy of the encryption key.
Let me share a plausible scenario which may be a bit on conspiracy theory side :)
Yes, WhatsApp uses secure protocol which prevents anyone, even WhatsApp servers from reading your messages. However WhastApp mobile app, developed by Facebook can see all your unencrypted text while it is typed or shown on the screen. So the ad targeting may be happening then.
Messages sent are encrypted, but what about the keyboards. I know Samsung logs all key strokes for ad purposes. Also WhatsApp backups maybe? Are they encrypted? What if another app is reading off of them. Or screen time apps, most of which are selling your data and need permission to read everything on your screen to block apps and content
Meta owns the code. You type messages into a little text box, Meta (the whatsapp app) takes that plain text and encrypts it. There's <i>no way</i> that they do not have access to each and every single message you type for enough time to collect data on you.<p>And, given it's Meta, there's no way they are not doing this.
I would love to see a control channel in this experiment here.<p>Pick two topics every time. Send one topic to your wife on Whatsapp.
Write paper messages to your wife about the other topic and give it to her.<p>Track how often you see advertisements for topics in both channels. A significant difference in any one channel will be worth sharing.
I had a video call with my mum on signal from her android phone to my macbook. Then I got very specific video recommendation in YouTube about our conversation within the same day. Her android is oppo. Could it be leaking the signal call and then cross match me with the phone numbers to my google account?
I realize that real life is more complicated than this, but if you tell companies "privacy is important to people" and "you will make more money by reading their messages", it is safe to assume companies will assure you that your data is private while using it to make money.
Most users activate WhatsApp's suggested "backup" feature which uploads all chats and those are most likely not E2E encrypted. And of course Meta could just directly read and upload stuff from the app, they probably buried a vague clause for that somewhere in their agreement.
"E2EE" -> "And during encryption we extract/share non-identifying personal information that we sell to ad networks (keywords or vectors from your conversations). But don't worry, there's no way to identify you based on this data."
I’ve seen this with telegram on iPhone. A few weeks ago I had a drastic argument with a female friend on telegram and immediately Instagram (meta) started showing me breakup memes and Rumi quotes. There were other recent examples. I don’t know what to make of it.
This is just <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks-listening-smartphone-microphone/" rel="nofollow">https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks-listening-smartphone-m...</a> in a different medium.
How do you know you have picked the topic at random? Maybe you've subconsciously seem adverts for that thing and that is why it is salient to you. Once you write it down, it becomes actually conscious and you start noticing the ads.
In my case i observe this was happening because of keyboard i was using (Gboard in my case), generally they keep track of all the words we are typing (for dictionary or suggestion purpose??) and that is used for ads targeting.
Both E2E encryption of messages and data processing for ads can happen at the same time. The app can do it on your phone and just send keywords to a server. In fact, this is the absolute best way for apps like these to do it.
I always wondered how is the business decision between charging a dollar per year for no information sharing vs some information sharing but free made.
Does anyone know of a messaging app that uses such a model?
My wife and I play a similar game .. except we don't actually exchange messages, we just talk in private about something. Next we'll try just thinking about it, and see if that works too!
You and your wife can both install Signal and play the same game. Then you can discard that Facebook is snooping on your messages. And you can think of bigger conspiracies which is always fun.
Call me paranoid, but what about stuff that you just say when around your phone? This has happened to me a few times (ads showing up about relevant obscure topics), so I'm wondering.
It's probably not WhatsApp. It's maybe your keyboard. Gboard (default on many Android phones) for example is sending words by default back to Google if you do not turn it off.
I was under the impression that Google keyboard uploads everything you type to the cloud for 'product improvement' purposes. Why do you think WhatsApp is to blame?
Use antitrust to break up the tech conglomerates into individual companies and ao avoid collusion of this sort?<p>There might still be collusion but it'd likely be far more transparent.
WhatsApp is end to end encrypted, but it can still detect what you are typing and can use that info to target you. It just can’t detect anything once you click send.
The message might be indeed end-to-end encrypted but the local WhatsApp installation could extract keywords as you type from the message and send them to Meta.
I literally mentioned Vitamix in a single WhatsApp call and started getting Vitamix ads on IG. Note that I've never searched for a blender, and I don't really want one; this is the only occurrence of Vitamix in... years of my conversations.<p>So, I'm guessing that they not only read your messages, but also run TTS on your calls and serve relevant ads.
make something up.<p>send messages extolling the utility of brrlftz
discuss how every body not taking advantage of brrlftz will miss out.
let your SO know that you need as much brrlftz as can be produced and delivered.<p>keep your eye out for cheap imitations offered to you.
Have you considered the possibility that Facebook is listening to you via the chips Mark Zuckerberg added to the COVID vaccine that he forced you to take?<p>Just do your own research, man...
I’m convinced WhatsApp’s e2e is BS. Because multiple times I’ve mentioned something I’ve never even googled and then had Facebook ads for those things show up minutes later.<p>The most notable one being renting an apartment. I viewed an apartment then sent a message to the agent requesting window grills or latches and then had adverts for that stuff straight away.<p>When ever I mention this on HN I get downvoted with lame excuses as to why it happened but none of them are plausible.<p>My friend messaged me saying he needed to go buy kitty litter and I get adverts for cat toys and supplies on Facebook despite not even replying to him?<p>Anyone who believes WhatsApp is really e2e is a fool IMO.
Its very unlikely. Not because FB is a kewl company with super kewl morals.<p>If you look at through the lens of game theory, the employees are extremely incentivised socially, ethically and financially to leak it.<p>First they didn't break E2E because its very hard to do it without people knowing.<p>So know we are talking about a "soft break" where they search/send key words before e2e kicks in. They wouldn't be able to that without quite a few employees knowing.<p>Let alone those super nerds who spend insane amount of time reverse engineering these apps and spoofing network requests just to see wassup.