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Facebook reportedly researching ways to use encrypted WhatsApp messages for ads

133 points by arkadiyt 5y ago

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RpFLCL 5y ago
Why they can't just use ads without the targeting...
- deleted 5y ago
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stuaxo 5y ago
And of course the same tech can be used for surveillance.
- fsflover 5y ago
  Targeted ads is surveillance.
WhyNotHugo 5y ago
> [...] is hoped to allow companies to read information from encrypted sets of data while also preserving privacy [...] These tow items sound mutually exclusive.
- Ensorceled 5y ago
  I don't know, how could figuring out the message is about arranging an extramarital affair or discussing cancer treatment options with your spouse be an invasion of privacy. /s This stuff is so obvious that it's obviously just willfull at this point.
- tmcb 5y ago
  Not only that, but if they can generate meaningful targeted advertising from encrypted data, that would be pretty a strong indicator that the encryption method is not strong enough. Ideally, encrypted data must be indistinguishable from random noise.
  - deleted 5y ago
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  - bovine3dom 5y ago
    As another comment mentioned, they're talking about using a technique that allows you to perform computations on encrypted data, with encrypted results output - the thing doing the computation never sees any decrypted data. So they could target advertisements but, as far as I can tell, they wouldn't be able to know which advertisements were served ... until the phone makes a request to download them, which seems to me to render it fairly but not entirely pointless.
    - dahfizz 5y ago
      My understanding is that homomorphic encryption allows one to transform encrypted data, but the data is still encrypted (random noise). i.e: decrypt(encrypt(x+1)) == decrypt(encrypt(x) +1) This does not allow you to get any information about X, only perform computations with it. If advertisers are getting information out of encrypted data, that means the encryption is broken.
      - bovine3dom 5y ago
        > If advertisers are getting information out of encrypted data, that means the encryption is broken. I'm just suggesting that Facebook wants to use homomorphic encryption to tell your phone which adverts to download. It won't know which adverts it told you to download or why ... but it will know that you've downloaded them once you do. It could in theory serve the adverts through homomorphic encryption, but then it wouldn't be able to invoice people based on how many times their adverts were served. I don't see that happening though.
    - 5y ago
- capableweb 5y ago
  They are not, they are referring to "Homomorphic encryption" which basically allows you to do computation on encrypted data without decrypting it or otherwise reveal the encrypted data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption
  - howaboutnope 5y ago
    > These resulting computations are left in an encrypted form As opposed to "read information from encrypted sets of data"
villgax 5y ago
They'll do something like FLOC but right before it's being sent lol
gentleman11 5y ago
See also: Facebook Wanted NSO Spyware to Monitor Users, NSO CEO Claims https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28001207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28001207
101_101 5y ago
well, the dumb fucks won't mind.
coldcode 5y ago
Maybe they plan on making the encryption slightly less encrypted so they can tell something about the content? Would that not mean the encryption is basically pointless?
Infinitesimus 5y ago
This seems like a good thing for FB and users (isn't that why researchers playing with homomorphic encryption more and more)? This way, FB gets to make money off ads with fewer privacy concerns. I have no insider knowledge but I fully expect Apple, Google and MS are actively trying to do this too.
dirkmode2 5y ago
Funny that for an "ad" company, I do not see a single ad on their frontpage nor on any pages that require me to create a facebook account.
rietta 5y ago
Why not simply display generic ads to people and be done with it. Use more specific ads on certain pages/groups. Content tracking should not be necessary and is creepy.
jonathanlydall 5y ago
While 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 unlikely to give anyone an option to opt out. On an unrelated note, I wish that YouTube offered a "no adverts" subscription option, I don't want to have to pay the full price for their premium package when I watch very little YouTube and the only thing I want from it is the lack of adverts.
- deleted 5y ago
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- 8ytecoder 5y ago
  YouTube seem to be testing it in Europe. https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/2/22605455/youtube-premium-lite-pilot-benelux-nordics-experiment-ad-free-subscription https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/2/22605455/youtube-premium-l...
- nounaut 5y ago
  There's Youtube Premium Lite now which just stops the ads.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- paxys 5y ago
  I keep telling people that YouTube Premium is the most cost effective membership there is, and they look at me like I'm crazy. Since I got it YouTube has become a service I genuinely love.
  - jasonlotito 5y ago
    This. No ads is great, but the big surprise was the ability to download videos on my device and bring it with me when traveling. It's one of those features I didn't know I wanted until I had it, now I can't see myself not having it.
keyme 5y ago
Isn't there client side code in every Whatsapp client that analyzes your messages and sends data to FB for ad targeting? I know for a fact they can block certain message content from being sent. So at least a hash of every message is sent to FB. This isn't very far from it.
deweller 5y ago
Well, I suppose it is possible to target ads to specific users without knowing anything about the user other than an anonymous user ID. Of course, this requires one to trust that Facebook is not actually collecting any identifying info. The temptation to cut corners for more profit or for sheer expediency might be hard to resist.
ndkwj 5y ago
Can someone explain this? How can they not know what I'm talking about on WhatsApp if they show me targeted ads?
- thamer 5y ago
  The article mentions homomorphic encryption, which is a way to perform computation on encrypted text, yielding encrypted results _without_ revealing the plaintext. Instead of f(x) → y, you do f(encrypted(x)) → encrypted(y). So if you think of a function 'f' that can take text content and produce a relevant ad for it, and an encryption algorithm that converts plaintext 'x' into an encrypted 'X', then instead of running f(x) and getting an ad 'y', you'd instead run homomorphic_apply(f, X) – on the encrypted text – and you'd get an encrypted ad 'Y' without revealing 'x'. The device can keep the keys and do the decryption of 'Y', but running 'f' using homomorphic_apply can happen on the server side. In principle homomorphic encryption is very cool and the "trick" involved to get fully homomorphic encryption described in Craig Gentry's dissertation in 2009 is pretty amazing. When it finally clicked for me I thought this was one of the most clever papers I'd ever read and truly a "mind: blown" moment. That said, this is Facebook. As others have pointed out here, there's no need for such fancy processing and it makes much more sense to run the targeting algorithm on-device with access to the plaintext.
danuker 5y ago
> 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 point the encryption is broken.
- derefr 5y ago
  > 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 possible advertising content that could be run in an iAd view gets pre-cached on the client; the iAds framework—running inside the client's address space—then chooses what to show the user, selecting ads based on demographic/interest information it has available locally on the device, never leaked outside. 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. Apple then reports re-groups and anonymizes these metrics, and reports them to the advertiser / charges the advertiser for them. Of course, this means that advertisers need to be able to trust Apple's impression reporting; and to do that, they need to trust that Apple has set up iOS devices so that iAd selection + reporting is basically inviolable, such that nobody on the client end is generating false impressions. (Or, at least, that devices generating such impressions can be detected as being jailbroken through some mechanism, and so their iAd impression reports culled from the corpus.)
  - blensor 5y ago
    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
JohnWhigham 5y ago
What's that quote again from that early engineer? The smartest, highest paid engineers, and they fucking work on making you view more ads. We're living in an embarrassing era of massively misallocated resources.
- inciampati 5y ago
  This is even more true today, with a decade of research into the ROI of advertising showing that it isn't even making money for those who buy it. What a sad waste of energy and imagination. We can do better.
  - LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    Can we? As Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government -- except for all the others which have been tried. Similarly, capitalism is the worst form of economics -- except for all the others which have been tried. I mean, it's obvious to an external observer that a prisoner's dilemma, sub-optimal Nash equilibrium, or other coordination problem can best be solved by all sides cooperating. But the reason they're called dilemmas and problems is that there's no clear way for participants in the system to solve them. It's not like anyone actually likes the system. But no one has (nor could be trusted to use) the power to coordinate an action of the sort that could end it. This is just the state of the world right now, we opened Pandora's box with web technology and pulled out the undesirable factoid "It's lucrative to run individual profiling and sell ads." Society has a limited ability to push an agenda against incentives; pushing past tech giant privacy invasion and attention abuse is not something we are capable of doing right now. I think the only thing that can be hoped to change this equilibrium is to change the playing field. Change technology, improving adblockers, anti-tracking tools, and encryption. Educate kids and those willing to listen about the harms of advertising. The current generations of adult Americans grew up with roadside, TV, and radio ads, they view web ads as an extension of that and don't think about the privacy implications of that, but a kid who grows up in the Internet era aware that their activity is tracked and profiled (unless they use particular encryption tech and VPNs) will have a very different attitude, and perhaps eventually this abuse will be unprofitable.
paxys 5y ago
People 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.
- satysin 5y ago
  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?
  - anthony_r 5y ago
    How about decrypting the messages on the device and then sending them for ad classification to a remote service? Sounds like a no-brainer.
  - andai 5y ago
    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.
    - satysin 5y ago
      IMHO yes it would be a violation but WhatsApp would technically still be end to end encrypted. Do all the data mining and pattern matching on the device then upload some blob of data whenever needed to better shape the advertising profile. Like I said I am honestly surprised this is not what Facebook have been doing since the day they bought WhatsApp. I thought this was the reason they bought them. Sure the messages are all encrypted in the air and on their servers (theoretically anyway) but on the device is free rein and always has been. I can see (at least) two potential issues doing this though. First is obviously the resources of a phone vs the super clusters they have chugging away in Facebook data centers. Second is it would mean their precious data mining algorithms would need to be built into the app and on the device. This may be a huge intellectual property concern for them as it wouldn't take long for people to extract that no matter how obfuscated they try to make it. Of course that also depends on if it is even possible to get it onto a phone in the first place in a useful way.
kop316 5y ago
This is a dup of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28053808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28053808 From my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28054329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28054329 There is a severe misunderstanding of what Homomorphic Encryption is, but how they explain facebook is trying to use it is not how it works.
mrkramer 5y ago
Zuckerberg said that they combat spam on WhatsApp not by reading your messages because since they are end to end encrypted they are obviously unable to do it but by analyzing your metadata and your behavior on the service. So I assume the same strategy can be used for ads. Encryption is not a problem; if I'm not mistaken various security agencies in USA also bet on metadata when strong encryption is in question.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  Perhaps we consumers should demand E2EE metadata then? Would such a thing be theoretically feasible? Or not because it would be like Tor with the entire Internet controlled by the adversary?
  - mrkramer 5y ago
    I don't know about E2EE metadata but I was referring to WhatsApp metadata in general, for example: "Alice sent 3 messages to Bob at 7:05 AM"
forrestgumbc 5y ago
How dare they try to make money from their business
- LightG 5y ago
  If ad revenue is your only go to for money, maybe your business model just ... sucks.
  - nerdponx 5y ago
    Lots of people are happy with products that are supported by advertising. Problems arise when the business model relies on surveillance, which endangers and violates the rights of end users.
    - LightG 5y ago
      True. Personally it demonstrates a lack of imagination or the "easy way out". For example, Google showed incredible to innovation to do what they did with Adwords. But then the way they slapped ads on Youtube has been gross. There's basic user experience also. Agreed though. Surveillance and privacy are even more important.
littlecranky67 5y ago
This should not be possible, or must be considered crypto analysis right away. An encryption is build by design such that it is not possible to obtain any knowledge of the content of the encrypted message (or series of consecutive encrypted messages). If I can make some assumptions about an encrypted message (i.e. its content, the authors interesets etc.) the encryption is flawed by definition.
forcry 5y ago
We should all just switch to something like https://delta.chat/en/ https://delta.chat/en/ where the messaging protocol is implemented over plain old emails. It makes the most sense, even without Facebook being bad and all.
kylehotchkiss 5y ago
I'm not very well versed in encryption but I know many here are and wanted to see if how I imagined this has any merit - is this something where WhatsApp could encrypt messages word by word instead of by message, and keep a list of the hashes of top sent words and their counts somewhere, then facebook would send some ads directory to WhatsApp clients, where they'd encrypt each keyword in the dictionary, and then compare the dictionary hashes to the top send word hashes, and try to make a match on the client side for specific ads to show? Or is this more that full encrypted messages would be scanned for some type of needle in the haystack that could infer some value about what's being sent?
- elromulous 5y ago
  I am not a cryptographer. At a quick inspection this kind of thing would result in pretty bad encryption. A hash of each word (unless salted with a different salt each time, defeating the purpose) is easily broken, even if the hash is a cryptographic hash. I.e. I can build up a dictionary by hashing the top 100k most common words. This kind of attack is why every encryption needs some randomness (or something that's changing) injected to it. It's also unprotected against replay attacks, etc. And I'm probably just scratching the surface. You really have to encrypt full messages. And sending the same message twice has to result in different ciphertexts. And you need nonces. And probably many other things. Cryptography is hard.
- weex 5y ago
  This would only be possible if the same encryption key was used for every message. But I don't think that's the case. So the same plaintext word is encrypted differently every time.
LightG 5y ago
I'm just about still on Whatssap because my network are on it and I'm assured that messages are encrypted. The moment ads arrive, I'm done. I get the need to make money but this isn't it. * * look at what Google did to Youtube for an abject demonstration in how to ruin your own platform ... 6 second ads because longer and longer, became multiple ads became full screen ads, became un-skippable, became ... all completely blocked or piped in separately now otherwise I'd go bananas.
beauHD 5y ago
I 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 Facebook what my tastes and lifestyle preferences even are. Facebook just infers based on keywords and what things I interact with on their platform, which is a terrible way to gauge preferences, since I could talk about cars in a comment, per se, but that doesn't mean I drive. It's the same with all other ADs I get. They're all almost fraudulently inaccurate, and as an engineer I think we should be building things that work properly, are lucrative on their own merit, and not based on borderline fraud.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  Form I would fill out: [√] Doesn't like ads.
  - emsy 5y ago
    I mean I get it. I got to know somewhere that something I’m interested in buying exists. However, there has to be a better system then tracking my every move online and then force-feeding me ads about crappy products that I don’t like or worse, outright scams. I even watch videos on youtube about products I’m interested in VOLUNTARILY. How is this a billion dollar industry?
    - JKCalhoun 5y ago
      > I got to know somewhere that something I’m interested in buying exists. I even have a problem with that. It's hard to put into words — I'm put off even by the idea that I am to be treated as a consumer. I am even slightly embarrassed when I consume a non-necessity. I don't like door-to-door salespersons. It's not because they are pushy that I dislike them but because they are unbidden. An unsolicited ad is a door-to-door salesperson — even if it is for a thing I wanted. When I want something, I feel I should be the one to act to seek the thing out. The truth is, I likely consume more than I should and prefer that there be friction.
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endisneigh 5y ago
I'm sure end-to-end encryption is great and all, but if a company like Facebook is giving you the client, what difference does e2e encryption make if you're trying to prevent Facebook from seeing your stuff? Obviously you can see the plain text messages even if it was encrypted, and so Facebook/WhatsApp could theoretically see it too. Isn't this true of any app, e2ee or not? Adding ads at that point is just trivial - process on the client.
i-848181-neev 5y ago
How I’m using WhatsApp today: because I have to in order to communicate with businesses and contacts that are required to use it in their home countries. Ínstalled with no permissions to an address book, camera or mic. Somewhat of a pain that I can’t save contacts but at least it’s still possible to communicate.
tjmehta 5y ago
Head of WhatsApp (Will Cathcart) responded: “We're not pursuing homomorphic encryption for @WhatsApp…” Full tweet: https://twitter.com/wcathcart/status/1422611553954668546?s=21 https://twitter.com/wcathcart/status/1422611553954668546?s=2...
8eye 5y ago
i am sure “they” are reading this, others downvote me but, maybe ask our opinion before signup, like a quick 3 question survey. that would be less extreme than sounding creepy

133 points by arkadiyt 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

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RpFLCL 5y ago

Why they can't just use ads without the targeting...

deleted 5y ago
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stuaxo 5y ago

And of course the same tech can be used for surveillance.

fsflover 5y ago
Targeted ads is surveillance.

WhyNotHugo 5y ago

> [...] is hoped to allow companies to read information from encrypted sets of data while also preserving privacy [...] These tow items sound mutually exclusive.

Ensorceled 5y ago
I don't know, how could figuring out the message is about arranging an extramarital affair or discussing cancer treatment options with your spouse be an invasion of privacy. /s This stuff is so obvious that it's obviously just willfull at this point.
tmcb 5y ago
Not only that, but if they can generate meaningful targeted advertising from encrypted data, that would be pretty a strong indicator that the encryption method is not strong enough. Ideally, encrypted data must be indistinguishable from random noise.
- deleted 5y ago
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- bovine3dom 5y ago
  As another comment mentioned, they're talking about using a technique that allows you to perform computations on encrypted data, with encrypted results output - the thing doing the computation never sees any decrypted data. So they could target advertisements but, as far as I can tell, they wouldn't be able to know which advertisements were served ... until the phone makes a request to download them, which seems to me to render it fairly but not entirely pointless.
  - dahfizz 5y ago
    My understanding is that homomorphic encryption allows one to transform encrypted data, but the data is still encrypted (random noise). i.e: decrypt(encrypt(x+1)) == decrypt(encrypt(x) +1) This does not allow you to get any information about X, only perform computations with it. If advertisers are getting information out of encrypted data, that means the encryption is broken.
    - bovine3dom 5y ago
      > If advertisers are getting information out of encrypted data, that means the encryption is broken. I'm just suggesting that Facebook wants to use homomorphic encryption to tell your phone which adverts to download. It won't know which adverts it told you to download or why ... but it will know that you've downloaded them once you do. It could in theory serve the adverts through homomorphic encryption, but then it wouldn't be able to invoice people based on how many times their adverts were served. I don't see that happening though.
  - 5y ago
capableweb 5y ago
They are not, they are referring to "Homomorphic encryption" which basically allows you to do computation on encrypted data without decrypting it or otherwise reveal the encrypted data. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption
- howaboutnope 5y ago
  > These resulting computations are left in an encrypted form As opposed to "read information from encrypted sets of data"

villgax 5y ago

They'll do something like FLOC but right before it's being sent lol

gentleman11 5y ago

See also: Facebook Wanted NSO Spyware to Monitor Users, NSO CEO Claims https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28001207 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28001207

101_101 5y ago

well, the dumb fucks won't mind.

coldcode 5y ago

Maybe they plan on making the encryption slightly less encrypted so they can tell something about the content? Would that not mean the encryption is basically pointless?

Infinitesimus 5y ago

This seems like a good thing for FB and users (isn't that why researchers playing with homomorphic encryption more and more)? This way, FB gets to make money off ads with fewer privacy concerns. I have no insider knowledge but I fully expect Apple, Google and MS are actively trying to do this too.

dirkmode2 5y ago

Funny that for an "ad" company, I do not see a single ad on their frontpage nor on any pages that require me to create a facebook account.

rietta 5y ago

Why not simply display generic ads to people and be done with it. Use more specific ads on certain pages/groups. Content tracking should not be necessary and is creepy.

jonathanlydall 5y ago

While 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 unlikely to give anyone an option to opt out. On an unrelated note, I wish that YouTube offered a "no adverts" subscription option, I don't want to have to pay the full price for their premium package when I watch very little YouTube and the only thing I want from it is the lack of adverts.

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8ytecoder 5y ago
YouTube seem to be testing it in Europe. https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/2/22605455/youtube-premium-lite-pilot-benelux-nordics-experiment-ad-free-subscription https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/2/22605455/youtube-premium-l...
nounaut 5y ago
There's Youtube Premium Lite now which just stops the ads.
- deleted 5y ago
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paxys 5y ago
I keep telling people that YouTube Premium is the most cost effective membership there is, and they look at me like I'm crazy. Since I got it YouTube has become a service I genuinely love.
- jasonlotito 5y ago
  This. No ads is great, but the big surprise was the ability to download videos on my device and bring it with me when traveling. It's one of those features I didn't know I wanted until I had it, now I can't see myself not having it.

keyme 5y ago

Isn't there client side code in every Whatsapp client that analyzes your messages and sends data to FB for ad targeting? I know for a fact they can block certain message content from being sent. So at least a hash of every message is sent to FB. This isn't very far from it.

deweller 5y ago

Well, I suppose it is possible to target ads to specific users without knowing anything about the user other than an anonymous user ID. Of course, this requires one to trust that Facebook is not actually collecting any identifying info. The temptation to cut corners for more profit or for sheer expediency might be hard to resist.

ndkwj 5y ago

Can someone explain this? How can they not know what I'm talking about on WhatsApp if they show me targeted ads?

thamer 5y ago
The article mentions homomorphic encryption, which is a way to perform computation on encrypted text, yielding encrypted results _without_ revealing the plaintext. Instead of f(x) → y, you do f(encrypted(x)) → encrypted(y). So if you think of a function 'f' that can take text content and produce a relevant ad for it, and an encryption algorithm that converts plaintext 'x' into an encrypted 'X', then instead of running f(x) and getting an ad 'y', you'd instead run homomorphic_apply(f, X) – on the encrypted text – and you'd get an encrypted ad 'Y' without revealing 'x'. The device can keep the keys and do the decryption of 'Y', but running 'f' using homomorphic_apply can happen on the server side. In principle homomorphic encryption is very cool and the "trick" involved to get fully homomorphic encryption described in Craig Gentry's dissertation in 2009 is pretty amazing. When it finally clicked for me I thought this was one of the most clever papers I'd ever read and truly a "mind: blown" moment. That said, this is Facebook. As others have pointed out here, there's no need for such fancy processing and it makes much more sense to run the targeting algorithm on-device with access to the plaintext.

danuker 5y ago

> 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 point the encryption is broken.

derefr 5y ago
> 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 possible advertising content that could be run in an iAd view gets pre-cached on the client; the iAds framework—running inside the client's address space—then chooses what to show the user, selecting ads based on demographic/interest information it has available locally on the device, never leaked outside. 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. Apple then reports re-groups and anonymizes these metrics, and reports them to the advertiser / charges the advertiser for them. Of course, this means that advertisers need to be able to trust Apple's impression reporting; and to do that, they need to trust that Apple has set up iOS devices so that iAd selection + reporting is basically inviolable, such that nobody on the client end is generating false impressions. (Or, at least, that devices generating such impressions can be detected as being jailbroken through some mechanism, and so their iAd impression reports culled from the corpus.)
- blensor 5y ago
  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

JohnWhigham 5y ago

What's that quote again from that early engineer? The smartest, highest paid engineers, and they fucking work on making you view more ads. We're living in an embarrassing era of massively misallocated resources.

inciampati 5y ago
This is even more true today, with a decade of research into the ROI of advertising showing that it isn't even making money for those who buy it. What a sad waste of energy and imagination. We can do better.
- LeifCarrotson 5y ago
  Can we? As Churchill said, democracy is the worst form of government -- except for all the others which have been tried. Similarly, capitalism is the worst form of economics -- except for all the others which have been tried. I mean, it's obvious to an external observer that a prisoner's dilemma, sub-optimal Nash equilibrium, or other coordination problem can best be solved by all sides cooperating. But the reason they're called dilemmas and problems is that there's no clear way for participants in the system to solve them. It's not like anyone actually likes the system. But no one has (nor could be trusted to use) the power to coordinate an action of the sort that could end it. This is just the state of the world right now, we opened Pandora's box with web technology and pulled out the undesirable factoid "It's lucrative to run individual profiling and sell ads." Society has a limited ability to push an agenda against incentives; pushing past tech giant privacy invasion and attention abuse is not something we are capable of doing right now. I think the only thing that can be hoped to change this equilibrium is to change the playing field. Change technology, improving adblockers, anti-tracking tools, and encryption. Educate kids and those willing to listen about the harms of advertising. The current generations of adult Americans grew up with roadside, TV, and radio ads, they view web ads as an extension of that and don't think about the privacy implications of that, but a kid who grows up in the Internet era aware that their activity is tracked and profiled (unless they use particular encryption tech and VPNs) will have a very different attitude, and perhaps eventually this abuse will be unprofitable.

paxys 5y ago

People 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.

satysin 5y ago
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?
- anthony_r 5y ago
  How about decrypting the messages on the device and then sending them for ad classification to a remote service? Sounds like a no-brainer.
- andai 5y ago
  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.
  - satysin 5y ago
    IMHO yes it would be a violation but WhatsApp would technically still be end to end encrypted. Do all the data mining and pattern matching on the device then upload some blob of data whenever needed to better shape the advertising profile. Like I said I am honestly surprised this is not what Facebook have been doing since the day they bought WhatsApp. I thought this was the reason they bought them. Sure the messages are all encrypted in the air and on their servers (theoretically anyway) but on the device is free rein and always has been. I can see (at least) two potential issues doing this though. First is obviously the resources of a phone vs the super clusters they have chugging away in Facebook data centers. Second is it would mean their precious data mining algorithms would need to be built into the app and on the device. This may be a huge intellectual property concern for them as it wouldn't take long for people to extract that no matter how obfuscated they try to make it. Of course that also depends on if it is even possible to get it onto a phone in the first place in a useful way.

kop316 5y ago

This is a dup of: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28053808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28053808 From my other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28054329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28054329 There is a severe misunderstanding of what Homomorphic Encryption is, but how they explain facebook is trying to use it is not how it works.

mrkramer 5y ago

Zuckerberg said that they combat spam on WhatsApp not by reading your messages because since they are end to end encrypted they are obviously unable to do it but by analyzing your metadata and your behavior on the service. So I assume the same strategy can be used for ads. Encryption is not a problem; if I'm not mistaken various security agencies in USA also bet on metadata when strong encryption is in question.

axiosgunnar 5y ago
Perhaps we consumers should demand E2EE metadata then? Would such a thing be theoretically feasible? Or not because it would be like Tor with the entire Internet controlled by the adversary?
- mrkramer 5y ago
  I don't know about E2EE metadata but I was referring to WhatsApp metadata in general, for example: "Alice sent 3 messages to Bob at 7:05 AM"

forrestgumbc 5y ago

How dare they try to make money from their business

LightG 5y ago
If ad revenue is your only go to for money, maybe your business model just ... sucks.
- nerdponx 5y ago
  Lots of people are happy with products that are supported by advertising. Problems arise when the business model relies on surveillance, which endangers and violates the rights of end users.
  - LightG 5y ago
    True. Personally it demonstrates a lack of imagination or the "easy way out". For example, Google showed incredible to innovation to do what they did with Adwords. But then the way they slapped ads on Youtube has been gross. There's basic user experience also. Agreed though. Surveillance and privacy are even more important.

littlecranky67 5y ago

This should not be possible, or must be considered crypto analysis right away. An encryption is build by design such that it is not possible to obtain any knowledge of the content of the encrypted message (or series of consecutive encrypted messages). If I can make some assumptions about an encrypted message (i.e. its content, the authors interesets etc.) the encryption is flawed by definition.

forcry 5y ago

We should all just switch to something like https://delta.chat/en/ https://delta.chat/en/ where the messaging protocol is implemented over plain old emails. It makes the most sense, even without Facebook being bad and all.

kylehotchkiss 5y ago

I'm not very well versed in encryption but I know many here are and wanted to see if how I imagined this has any merit - is this something where WhatsApp could encrypt messages word by word instead of by message, and keep a list of the hashes of top sent words and their counts somewhere, then facebook would send some ads directory to WhatsApp clients, where they'd encrypt each keyword in the dictionary, and then compare the dictionary hashes to the top send word hashes, and try to make a match on the client side for specific ads to show? Or is this more that full encrypted messages would be scanned for some type of needle in the haystack that could infer some value about what's being sent?

elromulous 5y ago
I am not a cryptographer. At a quick inspection this kind of thing would result in pretty bad encryption. A hash of each word (unless salted with a different salt each time, defeating the purpose) is easily broken, even if the hash is a cryptographic hash. I.e. I can build up a dictionary by hashing the top 100k most common words. This kind of attack is why every encryption needs some randomness (or something that's changing) injected to it. It's also unprotected against replay attacks, etc. And I'm probably just scratching the surface. You really have to encrypt full messages. And sending the same message twice has to result in different ciphertexts. And you need nonces. And probably many other things. Cryptography is hard.
weex 5y ago
This would only be possible if the same encryption key was used for every message. But I don't think that's the case. So the same plaintext word is encrypted differently every time.

LightG 5y ago

I'm just about still on Whatssap because my network are on it and I'm assured that messages are encrypted. The moment ads arrive, I'm done. I get the need to make money but this isn't it. * * look at what Google did to Youtube for an abject demonstration in how to ruin your own platform ... 6 second ads because longer and longer, became multiple ads became full screen ads, became un-skippable, became ... all completely blocked or piped in separately now otherwise I'd go bananas.

beauHD 5y ago

I 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 Facebook what my tastes and lifestyle preferences even are. Facebook just infers based on keywords and what things I interact with on their platform, which is a terrible way to gauge preferences, since I could talk about cars in a comment, per se, but that doesn't mean I drive. It's the same with all other ADs I get. They're all almost fraudulently inaccurate, and as an engineer I think we should be building things that work properly, are lucrative on their own merit, and not based on borderline fraud.

JKCalhoun 5y ago
Form I would fill out: [√] Doesn't like ads.
- emsy 5y ago
  I mean I get it. I got to know somewhere that something I’m interested in buying exists. However, there has to be a better system then tracking my every move online and then force-feeding me ads about crappy products that I don’t like or worse, outright scams. I even watch videos on youtube about products I’m interested in VOLUNTARILY. How is this a billion dollar industry?
  - JKCalhoun 5y ago
    > I got to know somewhere that something I’m interested in buying exists. I even have a problem with that. It's hard to put into words — I'm put off even by the idea that I am to be treated as a consumer. I am even slightly embarrassed when I consume a non-necessity. I don't like door-to-door salespersons. It's not because they are pushy that I dislike them but because they are unbidden. An unsolicited ad is a door-to-door salesperson — even if it is for a thing I wanted. When I want something, I feel I should be the one to act to seek the thing out. The truth is, I likely consume more than I should and prefer that there be friction.

deleted 5y ago

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endisneigh 5y ago

I'm sure end-to-end encryption is great and all, but if a company like Facebook is giving you the client, what difference does e2e encryption make if you're trying to prevent Facebook from seeing your stuff? Obviously you can see the plain text messages even if it was encrypted, and so Facebook/WhatsApp could theoretically see it too. Isn't this true of any app, e2ee or not? Adding ads at that point is just trivial - process on the client.

i-848181-neev 5y ago

How I’m using WhatsApp today: because I have to in order to communicate with businesses and contacts that are required to use it in their home countries. Ínstalled with no permissions to an address book, camera or mic. Somewhat of a pain that I can’t save contacts but at least it’s still possible to communicate.

tjmehta 5y ago

Head of WhatsApp (Will Cathcart) responded: “We're not pursuing homomorphic encryption for @WhatsApp…” Full tweet: https://twitter.com/wcathcart/status/1422611553954668546?s=21 https://twitter.com/wcathcart/status/1422611553954668546?s=2...

8eye 5y ago

i am sure “they” are reading this, others downvote me but, maybe ask our opinion before signup, like a quick 3 question survey. that would be less extreme than sounding creepy