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(wrt some comments in this thread) Is it so hard to believe that Meta is snooping on WhatsApp conversations? Meta, a company of unprecedented size that was bui

(wrt some comments in this thread) 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)? 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? It's just baffling. Apparently some people DO want to be abused. Plot twist: we all get ads about candy boxes from KZ now.

Closi 4y ago
From WhatsApp privacy policy: We limit the information we share with Meta in important ways. For example, we will always protect your personal conversations with end-to-end encryption, so that neither WhatsApp nor Meta can see these private messages.
- muzani 4y ago
  Also WhatsApp privacy policy: 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: - 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 ==== Popular theory is they can't see or store your messages, but can analyze them on the client and profile you (e.g. interested in brazil nuts)
- lrvick 4y ago
  Meta controls the proprietary Whatsapp client software that decrypts your messages and they can have that decrypt and scan the messages for them and send back metrics and how often different words are used. They can of course also have their app de-crypt and re-encrypt the messages to the key of a requesting third party like police or hired reviewers if certain keywords are used. Authorities could also have Google or Apple ship a signed tampered Whatsapp binary to any user or group of users, like protestors, that uses a custom seeded random number generator so they can predict all encryption keys generated and no one else, including Meta, will know. The variant of end to end encryption where third parties control the proprietary software on both ends, is called marketing.
- worker767424 4y ago
  It's possible that the client blindly fetches a mapping from keyword to ads, saw the keyword client-side, then requested the ad.
  - Drakim 4y ago
    You'd indirectly reveal what those keywords are to Meta by which ads are being requested. If an ad for a sex toy is being requested, it's pretty obvious what the two parties are talking about.
  - atoav 4y ago
    Still information leaks the encrypted channel and the trust is broken.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago
  > WhatsApp privacy policy Facebook has a deep culture of pathological lying. They lied to the FTC [1]. They lied to WhatsApp and to the EU [2]. They created an Oversight Board and then lied to it [3]. Each of those lies are more substantial than lying in a privacy policy. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/182_3109_facebook_complaint_filed_7-24-19.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/182_3109_fa... [2] https://euobserver.com/digital/137953 https://euobserver.com/digital/137953 [3] https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/21/the-oversight-board-wants-facebook-to-explain-its-controversial-rules-for-vips/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/21/the-oversight-board-wants-...
  - ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
    saying someone lied in the past is not convincing evidence that any arbitrary statement by them is affirmatively a lie
- pfortuny 4y ago
  What does “conversation “ mean in that text. I can perfectly mean just the audio exchanges when both parties talk. Also: E2E does not imply necessarily that they do not know the key.
- thescriptkiddie 4y ago
  I hate to break it to you, but a privacy policy is not a legally binding document.
- sschueller 4y ago
  Prove it. Open source the client and open the server for 3rd party apps to use.
spaceywilly 4y ago
The most plausible explanation is that people are just easy to predict. Might be tough to admit, but that’s actually a much simpler explanation than Facebook having a back door into our messages, which are end-to-end encrypted. As others above me have thoroughly explained, there are numerous ways Facebook could figure out what you’re reading about/listening to/viewing on the internet, which ultimately drives what you are chatting with your friends about. Reading your messages would actually be the most difficult and low fidelity way for them to try to mine this information. They can just see your entire browsing history and extract from there, since the majority of website have a tracking cookie that in some way phones home to Facebook.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bhk 4y ago
  Seriously? Facebook knows their internal thoughts well enough to guess what topics they would choose when trying to pick something they "never talk about"? If FB could do that, then FB would realize that these topics are not actually products they are interested in, so they wouldn't be showing ads.
  - dan-robertson 4y ago
    FB can show you one ad per month about some special steam train ride and maybe you’ll scroll past it without a second thought but then maybe one day you’ve been watching a film about the golden age of steam or you’ve been talking to a friend about it and then you see the ad and remember the film or conversation and you think ‘Crikey, how on earth did Facebook come up with that as!’ Facebook show (many people) a lot of ads and they only need to get lucky a few times for you to think it’s uncanny. All the non-unique times an ad was not relevant will have blurred together and so you won’t easily remember that they were the vast majority of the ads you see. A little bit of feedback (eg if you dwell on the coincidental ad) may cause you to see more related ads.
- z9znz 4y ago
  > The most plausible explanation is that people are just easy to predict. Might be tough to admit, but that’s actually a much simpler explanation than Facebook having a back door into our messages, which are end-to-end encrypted. I disagree with this to the extent that I would say the exact opposite is true. Facebook (and others) have proven time and time again that they cannot correctly predict user behavior by locking out or banning users who actually did nothing wrong (because their algorithms predicted that the user was breaking terms of service or might be planning to). This happens over and over, even in cases not so complex as the "photos of my child to send to my doctor". But on the flipside, Zuckerberg has been documented saying one thing to the public and exactly the opposite in private. Heck, Facebook has had memos and emails leaked where they talked about how they would say one thing in public (and to regulators) while doing the opposite secretly. I believe that Facebook cheats and breaks agreements (and laws) in multiple directions all the time, often willfully. They've even been caught cheating their own ad customers by intentionally overstating the effectiveness and target accuracy of their ads.
mgraczyk 4y ago
It's hard to believe because I worked there and worked on this stuff (data and ML side) and know that they aren't.
- moralestapia 4y ago
  >I worked there [...] and know that they aren't I know that, unfortunately, this is what puts bread on your mouth. But, really? Are you suggesting that Cambridge Analytica didn't happen? Did we all hallucinate that? You guys jumped the shark already. These attempts at damage control are laughable.
  - mgraczyk 4y ago
    It's not what puts bread in my mouth though. I don't work there now and don't work on anything related to ads or messaging. CA happened but that has nothing to do with this. The policies that allowed CA to collect data were very public, Zuck enthusiastically talked about the open knowledge graph all the time prior to CA, much to the dismay of many investors. Facebook didn't lie in that case, they misjudged the potential to misuse open data access, and the potential for negative PR as a result. By analogy, it's like you're the landlord of an apartment building and you don't lock the front door. You put up a huge sign saying "this door is unlocked, everyone is welcome". You sell ads for your building embracing the unlocked door policy. Then somebody walks in and photographs all the tenants through their windows. Suddenly people who didn't care about the unlocked policy are now very angry, and rightly so. But this is completely different from collecting data, lying about it, and operating a massive conspiracy to conceal the data use from literally tens of thousands of employees who would normally be able to see it.
KaiserPro 4y ago
> Is it so hard to believe that Meta is snooping on WhatsApp conversations? for a lot of people, no > Meta, a company of unprecedented size that was built over monetizing your private data? one of many companies, however "meta" does have the advantage that you can opt out of them, mostly. > A company who's been caught in plenty of scandals (like Cambridge Analytic) about this exact sort of thing (violating their users' privacy)? CA is interesting as it started out as an academic study, which was consented fully. CA then went on to scrape people's public profiles, which often included likes, friends, etc. This combined with other opensource information allowed them to claim to have good profiles of lots of people, the PR was strong. Should FB have had such an open graph? probably not. Should they have taken the rap for everything evil on the internet since 2016? no. There are other actors who are much more predatory who we should really be questioning. > Are you Meta employees? I think you place far to much faith into a company that is clearly floundering. Its not like it has a master plan to invade your entire life. Its reached it's peak and has not managed to find a new product, and is slowly fading. However, as we all think we are engineers, we should really design a test! but first we need to be mindful of how people are tracked: 1) phone ID. If you are on android, your phone is riddled with markers. Apple, supposedly they are hidden, but I don't believe that they don't leak 2) account, and account is your UUID that tracks what you like. 3) your IP. if you have IPv6, perhaps you are quite easy to track. even on V4 your home IP changes irregularly and can be combined with any of the above to work out that you are the same household. 4) your browser fingerprint. (be that cookies, or some other method) 5) your social graph method: 1) buy two new phones. 2) do not register them with wifi 3) create all new accounts for tiktock, gmail, instgram etc. 4) never log into anything you've created previously, or the fresh accounts on old devices. 5) message each other about something. However you need to source your ideas from something offline, like a book from a thrift store or the like. maybe an old magazine. open a page, pick the first thing your finger lands on. this will eliminate the "I heard about x" or "i'm in the mood for y" report back.
- TacticalCoder 4y ago
  > 5) message each other about something. However you need to source your ideas from something offline, like a book from a thrift store or the like. maybe an old magazine. open a page, pick the first thing your finger lands on. this will eliminate the "I heard about x" or "i'm in the mood for y" Wait... If WhatsApp is really E2EE encrypted, why would any of the other steps be necessary? Dude and his wife can simply pick at page at random from a magazine in a store, never search anything online about it, start talking about it using WhatsApp as if it was something of great interest to them. If they start getting related ads, obviously something shady is going on. There's no need for new phones / new GMail accounts / etc.
brap 4y ago
For anyone who has ever worked at a FAANG like company in the last decade, yes, this is actually very hard to believe. Despite the shady image they have, these companies go to great lengths to avoid doing shady things (because ultimately it’s bad for business). Not to mention the hundreds of tech employees that would have to be involved and keep quiet in this type of “conspiracy”. It’s incredibly unlikely, I truly believe that.
- rini17 4y ago
  The employees obviously are told the functions and APIs that they are implementing have a completely legit use case. That is not hard to believe at all and was the case in Cambridge Analytica scandal, for example.
- thatoneguytoo 4y ago
  I completely agree (as another employee of FAANG). It's ridiculously hard to do anything against policy once it's set, and trust me, the policies are set. Media overplays a lot of things which aren't just there. The sad reality is people are very predictable, even with basic data.
- dessant 4y ago
  I can imagine you haven't been involved in anything illegal, but I'm sure you've aware of Meta's documented track record of coordinated illegal actions. Do engineering teams just fall head first into a bucket of 2FA phone numbers and start using the data for ad targeting, and nobody bats an eye from the legal department to product managers? Or are they hypnotized to build services for biometric data collection without consent? Nobody does anything nefarious, but their collective actions which benefit the company just end up being illegal, again and again? The tech companies you work for do often engage in illegal activities, and some of your collegues are complicit. I'm sure it is an uncomfortable thought for some of you, but this is all part of the public record.
  - z9znz 4y ago
    I think there's a natural bias people have to want to NOT see the bad in the organizations that pay them $$$$. This is certainly true in a lot of finance.
madeofpalk 4y ago
> Is it so hard to believe that Meta is snooping on WhatsApp conversations? Where's the evidence? I don't know what ethos "Hacker News" is supposed to capture, but surely it's not superstition?
Aunche 4y ago
Being educated and tech-literate means that you should try to think more critically than "Facebook bad." You brought up Cambridge Analytica as your scandal of choice, which is the most newsworthy scandal, but the one where Facebook is the least guilty. Everyone had the same access to the APIs that Cambridge Analytica did and Facebook had shut down those APIs before the story broke out. Acting on instinct will only lead to regulation will won't be effective at stopping what you're trying to stop, cause needless side effects, and undermine your political credibility to push for changes that solve the important issues.
tedunangst 4y ago
Well, at least some people here are smart enough to know how to run disassemblers and packet captures. Clearly not everyone, but a few tech literate people.

Closi 4y ago

From WhatsApp privacy policy: We limit the information we share with Meta in important ways. For example, we will always protect your personal conversations with end-to-end encryption, so that neither WhatsApp nor Meta can see these private messages.

muzani 4y ago
Also WhatsApp privacy policy: 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: - 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 ==== Popular theory is they can't see or store your messages, but can analyze them on the client and profile you (e.g. interested in brazil nuts)
lrvick 4y ago
Meta controls the proprietary Whatsapp client software that decrypts your messages and they can have that decrypt and scan the messages for them and send back metrics and how often different words are used. They can of course also have their app de-crypt and re-encrypt the messages to the key of a requesting third party like police or hired reviewers if certain keywords are used. Authorities could also have Google or Apple ship a signed tampered Whatsapp binary to any user or group of users, like protestors, that uses a custom seeded random number generator so they can predict all encryption keys generated and no one else, including Meta, will know. The variant of end to end encryption where third parties control the proprietary software on both ends, is called marketing.
worker767424 4y ago
It's possible that the client blindly fetches a mapping from keyword to ads, saw the keyword client-side, then requested the ad.
- Drakim 4y ago
  You'd indirectly reveal what those keywords are to Meta by which ads are being requested. If an ad for a sex toy is being requested, it's pretty obvious what the two parties are talking about.
- atoav 4y ago
  Still information leaks the encrypted channel and the trust is broken.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
> WhatsApp privacy policy Facebook has a deep culture of pathological lying. They lied to the FTC [1]. They lied to WhatsApp and to the EU [2]. They created an Oversight Board and then lied to it [3]. Each of those lies are more substantial than lying in a privacy policy. [1] https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/182_3109_facebook_complaint_filed_7-24-19.pdf https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/cases/182_3109_fa... [2] https://euobserver.com/digital/137953 https://euobserver.com/digital/137953 [3] https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/21/the-oversight-board-wants-facebook-to-explain-its-controversial-rules-for-vips/ https://techcrunch.com/2021/09/21/the-oversight-board-wants-...
- ImPostingOnHN 4y ago
  saying someone lied in the past is not convincing evidence that any arbitrary statement by them is affirmatively a lie
pfortuny 4y ago
What does “conversation “ mean in that text. I can perfectly mean just the audio exchanges when both parties talk. Also: E2E does not imply necessarily that they do not know the key.
thescriptkiddie 4y ago
I hate to break it to you, but a privacy policy is not a legally binding document.
sschueller 4y ago
Prove it. Open source the client and open the server for 3rd party apps to use.

spaceywilly 4y ago

The most plausible explanation is that people are just easy to predict. Might be tough to admit, but that’s actually a much simpler explanation than Facebook having a back door into our messages, which are end-to-end encrypted. As others above me have thoroughly explained, there are numerous ways Facebook could figure out what you’re reading about/listening to/viewing on the internet, which ultimately drives what you are chatting with your friends about. Reading your messages would actually be the most difficult and low fidelity way for them to try to mine this information. They can just see your entire browsing history and extract from there, since the majority of website have a tracking cookie that in some way phones home to Facebook.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bhk 4y ago
Seriously? Facebook knows their internal thoughts well enough to guess what topics they would choose when trying to pick something they "never talk about"? If FB could do that, then FB would realize that these topics are not actually products they are interested in, so they wouldn't be showing ads.
- dan-robertson 4y ago
  FB can show you one ad per month about some special steam train ride and maybe you’ll scroll past it without a second thought but then maybe one day you’ve been watching a film about the golden age of steam or you’ve been talking to a friend about it and then you see the ad and remember the film or conversation and you think ‘Crikey, how on earth did Facebook come up with that as!’ Facebook show (many people) a lot of ads and they only need to get lucky a few times for you to think it’s uncanny. All the non-unique times an ad was not relevant will have blurred together and so you won’t easily remember that they were the vast majority of the ads you see. A little bit of feedback (eg if you dwell on the coincidental ad) may cause you to see more related ads.
z9znz 4y ago
> The most plausible explanation is that people are just easy to predict. Might be tough to admit, but that’s actually a much simpler explanation than Facebook having a back door into our messages, which are end-to-end encrypted. I disagree with this to the extent that I would say the exact opposite is true. Facebook (and others) have proven time and time again that they cannot correctly predict user behavior by locking out or banning users who actually did nothing wrong (because their algorithms predicted that the user was breaking terms of service or might be planning to). This happens over and over, even in cases not so complex as the "photos of my child to send to my doctor". But on the flipside, Zuckerberg has been documented saying one thing to the public and exactly the opposite in private. Heck, Facebook has had memos and emails leaked where they talked about how they would say one thing in public (and to regulators) while doing the opposite secretly. I believe that Facebook cheats and breaks agreements (and laws) in multiple directions all the time, often willfully. They've even been caught cheating their own ad customers by intentionally overstating the effectiveness and target accuracy of their ads.

mgraczyk 4y ago

It's hard to believe because I worked there and worked on this stuff (data and ML side) and know that they aren't.

moralestapia 4y ago
>I worked there [...] and know that they aren't I know that, unfortunately, this is what puts bread on your mouth. But, really? Are you suggesting that Cambridge Analytica didn't happen? Did we all hallucinate that? You guys jumped the shark already. These attempts at damage control are laughable.
- mgraczyk 4y ago
  It's not what puts bread in my mouth though. I don't work there now and don't work on anything related to ads or messaging. CA happened but that has nothing to do with this. The policies that allowed CA to collect data were very public, Zuck enthusiastically talked about the open knowledge graph all the time prior to CA, much to the dismay of many investors. Facebook didn't lie in that case, they misjudged the potential to misuse open data access, and the potential for negative PR as a result. By analogy, it's like you're the landlord of an apartment building and you don't lock the front door. You put up a huge sign saying "this door is unlocked, everyone is welcome". You sell ads for your building embracing the unlocked door policy. Then somebody walks in and photographs all the tenants through their windows. Suddenly people who didn't care about the unlocked policy are now very angry, and rightly so. But this is completely different from collecting data, lying about it, and operating a massive conspiracy to conceal the data use from literally tens of thousands of employees who would normally be able to see it.

KaiserPro 4y ago

> Is it so hard to believe that Meta is snooping on WhatsApp conversations? for a lot of people, no > Meta, a company of unprecedented size that was built over monetizing your private data? one of many companies, however "meta" does have the advantage that you can opt out of them, mostly. > A company who's been caught in plenty of scandals (like Cambridge Analytic) about this exact sort of thing (violating their users' privacy)? CA is interesting as it started out as an academic study, which was consented fully. CA then went on to scrape people's public profiles, which often included likes, friends, etc. This combined with other opensource information allowed them to claim to have good profiles of lots of people, the PR was strong. Should FB have had such an open graph? probably not. Should they have taken the rap for everything evil on the internet since 2016? no. There are other actors who are much more predatory who we should really be questioning. > Are you Meta employees? I think you place far to much faith into a company that is clearly floundering. Its not like it has a master plan to invade your entire life. Its reached it's peak and has not managed to find a new product, and is slowly fading. However, as we all think we are engineers, we should really design a test! but first we need to be mindful of how people are tracked: 1) phone ID. If you are on android, your phone is riddled with markers. Apple, supposedly they are hidden, but I don't believe that they don't leak 2) account, and account is your UUID that tracks what you like. 3) your IP. if you have IPv6, perhaps you are quite easy to track. even on V4 your home IP changes irregularly and can be combined with any of the above to work out that you are the same household. 4) your browser fingerprint. (be that cookies, or some other method) 5) your social graph method: 1) buy two new phones. 2) do not register them with wifi 3) create all new accounts for tiktock, gmail, instgram etc. 4) never log into anything you've created previously, or the fresh accounts on old devices. 5) message each other about something. However you need to source your ideas from something offline, like a book from a thrift store or the like. maybe an old magazine. open a page, pick the first thing your finger lands on. this will eliminate the "I heard about x" or "i'm in the mood for y" report back.

TacticalCoder 4y ago
> 5) message each other about something. However you need to source your ideas from something offline, like a book from a thrift store or the like. maybe an old magazine. open a page, pick the first thing your finger lands on. this will eliminate the "I heard about x" or "i'm in the mood for y" Wait... If WhatsApp is really E2EE encrypted, why would any of the other steps be necessary? Dude and his wife can simply pick at page at random from a magazine in a store, never search anything online about it, start talking about it using WhatsApp as if it was something of great interest to them. If they start getting related ads, obviously something shady is going on. There's no need for new phones / new GMail accounts / etc.

brap 4y ago

For anyone who has ever worked at a FAANG like company in the last decade, yes, this is actually very hard to believe. Despite the shady image they have, these companies go to great lengths to avoid doing shady things (because ultimately it’s bad for business). Not to mention the hundreds of tech employees that would have to be involved and keep quiet in this type of “conspiracy”. It’s incredibly unlikely, I truly believe that.

rini17 4y ago
The employees obviously are told the functions and APIs that they are implementing have a completely legit use case. That is not hard to believe at all and was the case in Cambridge Analytica scandal, for example.
thatoneguytoo 4y ago
I completely agree (as another employee of FAANG). It's ridiculously hard to do anything against policy once it's set, and trust me, the policies are set. Media overplays a lot of things which aren't just there. The sad reality is people are very predictable, even with basic data.
dessant 4y ago
I can imagine you haven't been involved in anything illegal, but I'm sure you've aware of Meta's documented track record of coordinated illegal actions. Do engineering teams just fall head first into a bucket of 2FA phone numbers and start using the data for ad targeting, and nobody bats an eye from the legal department to product managers? Or are they hypnotized to build services for biometric data collection without consent? Nobody does anything nefarious, but their collective actions which benefit the company just end up being illegal, again and again? The tech companies you work for do often engage in illegal activities, and some of your collegues are complicit. I'm sure it is an uncomfortable thought for some of you, but this is all part of the public record.
- z9znz 4y ago
  I think there's a natural bias people have to want to NOT see the bad in the organizations that pay them $$$$. This is certainly true in a lot of finance.

madeofpalk 4y ago

> Is it so hard to believe that Meta is snooping on WhatsApp conversations? Where's the evidence? I don't know what ethos "Hacker News" is supposed to capture, but surely it's not superstition?

Aunche 4y ago

Being educated and tech-literate means that you should try to think more critically than "Facebook bad." You brought up Cambridge Analytica as your scandal of choice, which is the most newsworthy scandal, but the one where Facebook is the least guilty. Everyone had the same access to the APIs that Cambridge Analytica did and Facebook had shut down those APIs before the story broke out. Acting on instinct will only lead to regulation will won't be effective at stopping what you're trying to stop, cause needless side effects, and undermine your political credibility to push for changes that solve the important issues.

tedunangst 4y ago

Well, at least some people here are smart enough to know how to run disassemblers and packet captures. Clearly not everyone, but a few tech literate people.