11 ms·

Google can now read your WhatsApp messages

473 points by bundie 1y ago

ryanrasti 1y ago
> With Gemini Apps Activity turned off, their Gemini chats are not being reviewed or used to improve our AI models. Indeed bizarre as the statement doesn't say much about data collection or retention. More generally, I'm conflicted here -- I'm big on personal privacy but the power & convenience that AI will bring will probably be too great to overcome. I'm hoping that powerful, locally-run AI models will become a mainstream alternative.
- bundie 1y ago
  Personally, I prefer AI to stay in its own corner. Let ChatGPT, Gemini, and the rest be something I open when I need them, like a website or an app. I'm not really into the whole "everything should have AI built into it" idea. It kind of reminds me of how the internet used to be. Back then, you had to go to a specific room to use the family computer. The internet was something you visited. Now, tech is everywhere, from our pockets to our bathrooms. I’m not sure I want AI following that same path.
  - bonoboTP 1y ago
    It's going the opposite direction. AI won't be inside each different thing, instead everything else will be nested under the AI. Like Gemini here. AI will have user-equivalent access to interact with any app. It will be the default and people will not mind it because it's convenient and if you have nothing to hide.
    - pests 1y ago
      What if you do have something to hide?
    - netsharc 1y ago
      Women were sharing their menstruation information with apps, until they surprisingly ended up in a corrupt regime with a corrupt judiciary that weaponizes this information to take away the rights over their own body...
  - ryanrasti 1y ago
    Agreed the privacy that keeping AI "in a corner" appeals to me too. The fundamental catch here is that 80%+ of the future benefit will likely come from the very thing that erodes privacy: deep integration and context. Imagine if a Gemini had your entire life in its context (haha scary I know!), prompting would be so much more powerful. That's the core, uncomfortable trade-off we're all facing now.
    - bonoboTP 1y ago
      > Imagine if a Gemini had your entire life in its context (haha scary I know!) Windows Recall [1] is this for your PC activities (not yet fed to AI, but I see no reason to think it will stay this way). Meta is working on glasses to record the IRL part. But your phone is probably enough for most of it. Joining Zoom meetings with AI note takers is getting popular [2]. Not long until in-person meetings will have AI listening in from the phone mics, of course just to increase productivity and to summarize and remind you later. Convenience! [1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/retrace-your-steps-with-recall-aa03f8a0-a78b-4b3e-b0a1-2eb8ac48701c https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/retrace-your-ste... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44446916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44446916
      - SoftTalker 1y ago
        If I can have the AI agent attend the meeting for me in the first place, and then provide me the notes that's the winning play. Take the morning stand-up: all the developers' agents know what they are working on and what any blockers are. They can all exchange information in a virtual AI meeting and then send the notes around. Meanwhile all the developers are getting something productive done.
        samrus 1y ago
        Reminds me of this https://youtu.be/VcHc54Z_b3w https://youtu.be/VcHc54Z_b3w
    - JohnFen 1y ago
      It's not an uncomfortable tradeoff to me. These systems being deeply integrated is simply too high of a price to pay. I cannot imagine a future benefit so great that it would be worth that.
- _verandaguy 1y ago
  My approach has been to lock AI assistants (for me, that's just Apple intelligence as far as I can help it) out of integrations with the vast majority of apps, and especially chat and email apps. At some point, some reverse engineer will publish a writeup either confirming or denying how local these models are, how much data (and maybe even what data) is being sent up to the mothership, and how these integrations appear to be implemented. It's not perfect, and it only offers a point-in-time view of the situation, but it's the best we can do in an intensely closed-source world. I'd be happier if these companies published the code (regardless of the license) and allowed users to test for build parity.
- stingraycharles 1y ago
  Maybe at some point, Apple is/was trying to do everything locally but it appears they have recently decided to move away from that idea and use OpenAI. I can understand why: you’re only using locally-run AI models every so often (maybe a few times a day), but when you use it, you still want it to be fast. So it will need to be a pretty heavy AI chip in your phone to be able to deliver that, which spends most of the time idling. Since compute costs are insane for AI, it only makes sense to optimize this and do the inference in the cloud. Maybe at some point local AI will be possible, but they’ll always be able to run much more powerful models in the cloud, because it makes much more sense from an economics point of view.
  - jpalawaga 1y ago
    Google also has AI models optimized to run on phones, they're just in a lot better of a position to actually build purpose-built LLMs for phones. It's not clear to me why certain classes of things still end up farmed out to the cloud (such as this, or is it?). Maybe their LLM hasn't been built in a very pluggable fashion.
  - Hizonner 1y ago
    > they have recently decided to move away from that idea and use OpenAI. ... although, to be fair, they're negotiating with OpenAI to run the models in "secure enclaves", which should, assuming everything works right which is a huge assumption, keep Apple or anybody else from reaching inside and seeing what the model is "thinking about".
- throwaway290 1y ago
  > the power & convenience that AI will bring will probably be too great to overcome What is that power? Honest question...
  - bonoboTP 1y ago
    Assistant stuff. Like you bark "order a pepperoni pizza from Joe's Pizza" and it happens. You take a pic of your fridge and say "order stuff to stock it up to my usual levels". Or book a flight, or buy concert tickets or clothes, or get media recommendations, replan a trip while driving if you change your mind and add a stop somewhere. Ask to summarize group chat message floods. Put on some music. Control smart home gadgets. It's hard to predict exactly though. I remember thinking in 2001 that nobody except the busiest businessmen would need a cell phone. A landline at home is perfectly enough and in special cases there are phone booths. And in 2011 I thought the same about smartphones. Why would I need email while walking in the street? Can't it wait until I'm home at the desktop? If I need computer stuff on the go, I can take a laptop. Similarly, I'm not quite sure how exactly it will go but probably in 10 years you'll need to have an AI agent to function in society. The legacy infrastructure decays if nobody uses it even if you'd prefer not to jump on the bandwagon. Today you often MUST have an app downloaded to do things, e.g. some museums require it, sometimes government services are much more tedious otherwise. Some restaurants only have a QR code and no physical menu. Often news items (from school, or local municipality) are only shared in social media. Etc. etc. I can easily imagine that there will be things you can't manually do in 2035, only by asking your AI agent to do it for you. And it will scan all your data to make sure that what you're doing is impeccable in intent and safety and permissibility (like an inverse captcha: you must be Gemini or another approved bot to do the action. As a human you have to jump a million hoops that maybe takes days of providing various details etc. And Gemini will be easy to spook and will be opinionated about whether you should really get to do that action or not.). And it will communicate behind your back with the AI of the other party to decide everything. Or who knows what. But it will be necessary to use.
    - southernplaces7 1y ago
      >Assistant stuff. Like you bark "order a pepperoni pizza from Joe's Pizza" and it happens. You take a pic of your fridge and say "order stuff to stock it up to my usual levels". Or book a flight, or buy concert tickets or clothes, or get media recommendations, replan a trip while driving if you change your mind and add a stop somewhere. Ask to summarize group chat message floods. Put on some music. Control smart home gadgets. Frankly, this sounds like a potential nightmare to me. Almost certainly, the big techCos that today use algorithmic "customer support" to randomly flag, ban and screw with users for completely opaque reasons and little recourse will try running all of the nice things you describe. It's very plausible that sooner or later it will become harder and harder to do any of those things by more conventional, atomic means, making you rely ever more on integrated connections between product/service providers and these ordering systems (it's "convenient", you see?) only to suddenly find yourself flagged, blocked, or banned for any number of idiotic, blandly brainless reasons and shut out of the most basic elements of your daily life. That people would readily agree to sign up for such dependence on these opaque things is a mystery to me, and I hope a huge pushback against it happens at some point. If you think I exaggerate, bear in mind how often such things already happen on a lesser scale in a world where having social media, a smartphone and accounts with services like Google's becomes necessary in some contexts. Also note how often someone or another finds themselves fucked when these existing dependencies suddenly get shut down because some bullshit algorithm supposedly said so. It's also bad enough that payment systems and banking can be cut off to people who (having broken no law at all) hold some politically controversial, publicly activist discourse, or that banking and certain basic services can be withheld in some bizarre way because you live a life in which your residency or other life choices are outside the average. To have the same risks apply for ever more minor reasons across a huge swathe of just living your life is a monstrously insidious way of marginalizing and homogenizing social divergence.
jmclnx 1y ago
If you do not like this, file a complaint with your State's AG. I just did that. I do not use WhatsApp, but I have other apps I do not want google to see.
- _verandaguy 1y ago
  Not every state(, country, province, region, whatever) has laws that restrict or prohibit this kind of activity. A complaint to a public prosecutor may not be a good option for many people, especially in the US which historically has had very permissive laws about how corporations can handle user data (with some exceptions like the CCPA, though TBD if that legislation would do much here).
- IncreasePosts 1y ago
  Don't use Gemini then, it seems pretty simple
  - jazzyjackson 1y ago
    One doesn't even need to have a google account at all if one doesn't want to do business with them
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - pkilgore 1y ago
    As the article states, "After turning it off, Google will still retain your data for up to 72 hours to "maintain safety and security of Gemini Apps" and allow Gemini to respond contextually."" Which means, AFAICT, it doesn't matter if you turn it off or not, Google still collects information and stores it for 72 hours as part of the core functionality of the operating system.
    - IncreasePosts 1y ago
      That's if you used Gemini with this feature. And if you haven't...?
bsaul 1y ago
how does this work ? Aren't the whatsapp data encrypted locally ?
- inerte 1y ago
  Screen reader?
  - bsaul 1y ago
    oh ok, didn't understand that it was working over a screen capture stream... thanks !
  - hnburnsy 1y ago
    Android Accessibility Service https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/accessibility/service https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/accessibility/... >Devices running Android 8.0 (API level 26) and higher include several text-processing features that make it easier for accessibility services to identify and operate on specific units of text that appear on screen.
- jazzyjackson 1y ago
  yes WhatsApp messages are stored in an encrypted sqlite database. I'm not an android dev so I'm not positive about this but I expect whatsapp is shipping their app with "App Actions" interface giving the assisstant certain actions it can perform, so this is not wholesale database access. See [0] App Actions extend your in-app functionality to Assistant, enabling users to access your app's features by voice. When a user invokes an App Action, Assistant matches the query to a BII declared in your shortcuts.xml resource, launching your app at the requested screen or displaying an Android widget. You declare BIIs in your app using Android capability elements. When you upload your app using the Google Play console, Google registers the capabilities declared in your app and makes them available for users to access from Assistant. https://developer.android.com/develop/devices/assistant/overview https://developer.android.com/develop/devices/assistant/over...
- pkilgore 1y ago
  You have to unencrypt data to process it and as soon as you do that, the right Kernel APIs are enough to see whatever you want -- here the accessibility APIs are probably enough to read any text you would be able to read.
pengaru 1y ago
e2e encryption is insufficient when you don't control the host, and though you may own your Android/iOS device - the proprietary stack owns you.
bix6 1y ago
These big tech companies are so frustrating. Why does every single aspect of our digital lives need to be monitored? It’s like whack a mole trying to get the most basic of privacy.
- saubeidl 1y ago
  Because that way they can build profiles of you and use them to manipulate you into buying junk you don't need. That, in turn, makes the line go up and the share holders happy. That's tech capitalism in a nutshell.
  - RiverCrochet 1y ago
    Why do I keep getting ads for stuff I can't afford then?
    - dylan604 1y ago
      How else are you going to keep up with the Joneses? They are just looking out for your social wellbeing
    - pengaru 1y ago
      > Why do I keep getting ads for stuff I can't afford then? You must be new here, have you not yet unlocked the wonders of credit card debt?
    - ozgrakkurt 1y ago
      Work more so you can buy more
    - jfyi 1y ago
      I largely get ads for things I already have bought. Otherwise, it's really general demographic stuff that doesn't strike a chord. I assume it's because I don't really browse for buyables unless I have the intent of buying something immediately. On a personal level, I fail entirely to understand the value proposition in web advertising.
    - 1y ago
Liftyee 1y ago
Things like these make me glad to have a Xiaomi phone with their minimal implementation of Google instead of a full on Android phone. I get to avoid this stuff being pushed on me, and I don't use any of the Xiaomi "AI" stuff (which wouldn't support foreign apps anyway). Granted, my data is definitely being sent to Xiaomi analytics, fixed by NextDNS. Re: governmental influence, I'd prefer Chinese to US (then again, that is my ethnicity bias). Recent events make the two governments look more similar than ever.
cesarb 1y ago
The whole situation is still clear as mud to me. What if I don't have the Gemini app installed, how do I get to its configuration screen? Is the component which exfiltrates the data part of the Gemini app, or is it a separate Android component which also has to be removed? What if I didn't receive that email?
- Macha 1y ago
  > What if I don't have the Gemini app installed, how do I get to its configuration screen? You can search "Gemini" in your settings app.
  - cesarb 1y ago
    > You can search "Gemini" in your settings app. Thanks, but that only leads to a screen asking whether I want to enable Gemini. I decline, and it goes back to the previous screen, without opening any settings form.
  - flyinghamster 1y ago
    Since I always answered "Not now" when my phone wanted to replace Google Assistant with Gemini, I still have Google Assistant on my phone. When I try to bring up Gemini settings, it will ask me if I want to replace Google Assistant with Gemini, and not give me access to any Gemini-related settings.
nabla9 1y ago
Learn how to disable Gemini AI on Android https://tuta.com/blog/how-to-disable-gemini-on-android https://tuta.com/blog/how-to-disable-gemini-on-android
- hueho 1y ago
  Don't even know what the product is about, but it went into my shitlist for redirecting me always to a badly machine-translated page, not understanding en-us as a language code in the URL, and not having a language selector.
paxys 1y ago
Gemini being able to read WhatsApp messages (when explicitly asked) and take actions can be convenient. If it does so without prompting or feeds the data back into their model in any way for training - that's a big no.
- lucb1e 1y ago
  It's apparently obvious to you that "hey Gemini, can you message Mike that I love him?" means the text is first sent to Google and then back to your phone and then by your phone to Mike. This isn't the case for everyone, perhaps also because it's not necessarily that way: https://www.macworld.com/article/678307/how-to-use-siri-offline-on-iphone-and-ipad.html https://www.macworld.com/article/678307/how-to-use-siri-offl... I couldn't find whether tasks related to "reading your messages" (like text to speech while you're driving or so) is a thing Siri does, but it obviously talks to you and if you tell it to send a message then that works offline so evidently there is some access there without needing to first upload it to the assistant's vendor
inerte 1y ago
There's a lot of business happening on WhatsApp. I don't think Google cares that much about the messages I sent to my family (although it helps with profiling and ad targetting) but I bet the real money is understanding what people are buying and how they do commerce in WhatsApp.
gowld 1y ago
If you connect Gemini to Assistant, and connect Assistant to Whatsapp, then you have connected Gemini to Whatsapp. https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/9984245?hl=en https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/9984245?hl=en Documentation is unclear, but it appears Gemini is always connected to Utilities, and Utilities is always connected to Whatsapp, and the data flow between these apps is not documented.
okokwhatever 1y ago
Choose your own adventure: 1. Security > Privacy > Convenience 2. Security > Convenience > Privacy 3. Privacy > Security > Convenience 4. Privacy > Convenience > Security 5. Convenience > Security > Privacy 6. Convenience > Privacy > Security
- fsflover 1y ago
  > Privacy > Security There's no privacy without security.
  - baobun 1y ago
    More precisely, confidentiality is one dimension of information security. It doesnt make sense to put them against each other.
msgodel 1y ago
There is no such thing as privacy on a non-free OS and especially on a non-free OS with a closed app store. We told you this would happen.
Oras 1y ago
I wonder what meta will do, they recently introduced meta ai inside WhatsApp (even though I didn’t enable it, or asked for it), it’s just floating there. With Gemini having access, those who are happy to give AI access to their apps would surely prefer Gemini as it will be phone wide instead of meta ai which only runs inside WhatsApp.
skybrian 1y ago
Do people use Gemini on their phones? Does it do anything if you’re not using it?
iamleppert 1y ago
I don't see what the problem is. If the User doesn't want Gemini to read his or her messages, the User doesn't have to partake in the sending of the messages. Simple! A User agrees to be bound by the ToS (Terms of Service) in having they do take to receive the user agreement as bound in law by Google. The User doesn't need to understand or have the right to contest the agreement or the use of any data created by a User, as the User can simply not use the product or service as governed by the same Google ToS. Simple!
- bundie 1y ago
  So simple. :-)
- bigbacaloa 1y ago
  [dead]
jeroenhd 1y ago
Google has been working on this since November last year going by the wayback archive of the support page for this feature. I'm not seeing any indication that Gemini can read your messages, though. You can compose messages and start calls, but I can't get it to read me any of my messages. In fact, I can't even get it to send messages to group chats, only to individual contacts. The feature makes a lot of sense, of course. WhatsApp is to many countries across the globe what texting and calling is to Americans. If your smart assistant can't even interact with WhatsApp, it's basically useless for many people. Edit: ah, that explains why I can't make Gemini read my messages to me, Google's own documentation (https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/15574928 https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/15574928) says it can't: What Gemini can’t do with WhatsApp Read or summarize your messages Add or read images, gifs, or memes in your messages Add or play audio or videos in your messages Read or respond to WhatsApp notifications If you connected Google Assistant to WhatsApp, it seems like data may flow that direction, but then you've already hooked WhatsApp into Google before so I don't think anyone will be surprised there. Does anyone know how I can make Gemini read messages? I can't even find the assistant settings necessary for that stuff to function.
- eddythompson80 1y ago
  > The Gemini mobile app may support some of these actions with help from Google Assistant or the Utilities app, even with WhatsApp disabled in Gemini. Learn more about Google Assistant features in your Gemini mobile app and actions supported by the Utilities app.
- Hizonner 1y ago
  What Gemini should be able to do with WhatsApp: Exactly and only what any other random app on the phone could do with WhatsApp, assuming that you have enabled that in exactly the way you would have to enable any other random app to do it. Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source of the OS to give its software special privilege to reach inside of third-party apps.
  - kccqzy 1y ago
pier25 1y ago
AI has really accelerated enshitification
Mistletoe 1y ago
In the year 2025 I can’t think of any reason a person would use Signal instead of WhatsApp. All your friends and family should move to Signal if that is your excuse.
- ectospheno 1y ago
  It was fairly easy to move people I talk with to signal. I stopped responding to anything else. I don’t miss the few people who didn’t adjust.
- cosmic_cheese 1y ago
  Mostly for QoL and polish, which WhatsApp has the upper hand in. Perhaps most notably, WhatsApp treats desktop as a first-tier platform instead of as an afterthought, which makes its desktop app considerably nicer.
- Ylpertnodi 1y ago
  > In the year 2025 I can’t think of any reason a person would use Signal instead of WhatsApp. I can. Several, actuallly > All your friends and family should move to Signal if that is your excuse. They did. Those that didn't/won't, do have my telephone number, though.
- Mistletoe 1y ago
  Ugh I meant *would not* use Signal instead of WhatsApp. Really wish HN didn't seal off edits so fast.
sega_sai 1y ago
The whole situation with Gemini Apps Activity setting is so frustrating. Even if I pay for Gemini Pro, the only way to make sure there will be no human looking at your chats is to set Apps Activity to off, which means you don't have any history for Gemini chats, even for the messages from a minute ago.
- bionhoward 1y ago
  It’s absurdly dumb, agreed
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- Barbing 1y ago
  Reminiscent of their heavy handed approach to disabling watch history on YouTube, even when paying for YouTube Premium. (Google punishes viewers who make themselves less valuable to advertisers by giving them an entirely blank homepage.)
  - kccqzy 1y ago
    It's not a punishment; it's entirely transactional. You make yourself less valuable to advertisers so you also make yourself less valuable to Google. Therefore Google provides you with fewer features such as a blank homepage. The era of Google providing costly features to users with no benefit to itself is coming to an end.
    - T4iga 1y ago
      Except you missed that part where they said > Premium If you pay for it, you can expect to not be the product.
      - AlexandrB 1y ago
        I think that ship sailed a few years ago. It's better for big tech if you pay and be the product so they went ahead and did that.
Macha 1y ago
Apparently, my personal account being a gsuite account is to my benefit this time as "your administrator has not enabled access to Gemini for your account".
7373737373 1y ago
I hope the EU sues the shit/existence out of them for exfiltrating private conversations and violating the secrecy of correspondence without explicit consent Tech corporations and their managers are basically data rapists
- vaylian 1y ago
  > for exfiltrating private conversations and violating the secrecy of correspondence without explicit consent I have bad news for you: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co... The EU wants to exfiltrate chats as well.
  - actionfromafar 1y ago
    That is very bad. The EU is very much not a monolith though, and both things could happen at once.
beagle3 1y ago
WhatsApp backup on your Google account contains all your message history, and is unencrypted. If you use google cloud backup for your phone, Google can read your WhatsApp messages, and has been able to do so for more than 5 years now.
- jadamson 1y ago
  There's an option to enable end-to-end encryption on your backups. https://faq.whatsapp.com/490592613091019 https://faq.whatsapp.com/490592613091019
  - beagle3 1y ago
    Nice. It wasn’t there last time I checked. I wonder what percentage of WhatsApp users backup to Google cloud, and what percentage of those use encryption.
  - brinerustle 1y ago
    It is safe to say, optional services get little adoption. Look at email, of the tens of billions of email addresses, there are orders of magnitude lower numbers of pgp or gpg keys. Similar experience with telegram encrypted chats. So having the option of e2ee in a communication platform, is not having it in practice.
nicce 1y ago
More surprising is that people think this is the first time - be default your WhatsApp backups are unencrypted by default so they have had the access for long time for large part of the userbase. Also primary reason why WhatsApp hasn’t been a problem for law enforcements.
hbn 1y ago
People have been clowning on Apple for being behind on the AI stuff and -- while I'd never defend how they promised a bunch of features in 2024, showed them in ads, and sold iPhones based on vaporware, but still haven't shipped most of the features -- I will say, I imagine a lot of the hold-up is because they realized how dangerous it is to start trusting AI with the sensitive data on your phone. It's probably not too hard to make it work most of the time, but even if there's a 0.0001% chance the AI will send a sensitive image meant for your wife to your boss, you should probably reconsider shipping. I don't believe Google has the tact to care as long as they look like a market competitor in something.
- bapak 1y ago
  > even if there's a 0.0001% chance the AI will send a sensitive image meant for your wife to your boss, you should probably reconsider shipping. Not the best example since Siri has been misunderstanding us for many, many years. You really meant to send that I love you to Louis coworker, right? Not to "Love"? Too late
  - LeoPanthera 1y ago
    > You really meant to send that I love you to Louis coworker, right? Not to "Love"? Too late Why make up stuff like this? Siri confirms everything that sends data.
    - kstrauser 1y ago
      That's not quite true, especially if you're using something like CarPlay. I have personally had this interaction: Me: Hey Siri, text Jen [my wife] I love you. Siri: OK, texting Johnny Chan [my ex-boss] I love you. Me: What NO! Johnny: Uh... That happened. It's not something I read about or made up. It went pretty much exactly like that.
      - averageRoyalty 1y ago
        This is a setting under Settings > Siri & Search > Automatically send messages. It's disabled by default, but it's possible you turned it on by accident or got a bad default setting I suppose.
sschueller 1y ago
Why does Whatsapp allow this? It defeats their whole encryption Spiel.
- brinerustle 1y ago
  because whatsapp is owned by meta, and their business model is to monetize our data. The agreement between google and meta is not public, but we can be sure it was to monetize our data.
- bspammer 1y ago
  No amount of in-transit encryption can help when google controls the OS.
ivell 1y ago
Being unable to easily uninstall is quite annoying. Reminds me of the old Microsoft with their deep integration of Internet Explorer into the OS.
saidinesh5 1y ago
Not exactly related, but does anyone know what's the best way to backup WhatsApp data on an Android phone without using Google drive these days?
- ilpianista 1y ago
  I use Syncthing to backup WA and Signal
  - amlib 1y ago
    But isn't it quite useless to backup WA when it's all encrypted and you can't backup the key?
    - ilpianista 1y ago
      The backup key is shown the first time you enable encryption.
      - fransje26 1y ago
        Would you happen to have good resources detailing the process?
        ilpianista 1y ago
        Pretty much what I summarized back in 2019: https://scarpino.dev/posts/automated-phone-backup-with-syncthing.html https://scarpino.dev/posts/automated-phone-backup-with-synct... Nowayadays Syncthing is no more maintained due to some PlayStore drama, but Syncthing-Fork is a good replacement.
        fransje26 1y ago
        I'll start from there, thanks!
        saidinesh5 1y ago
declan_roberts 1y ago
At least Google users get a usable AI for all of their phones spying. Siri can't even pronounce my own name correctly!
qwertox 1y ago
Just a kind reminder that you can't delete chats on Gemini if you're using a Google Workspace account. I don't know how they believe that this is remotely a good thing, or if this is even in accordance with the GDPR. Now just assume something odd happens and it pulls in a couple of your WhatsApp messages into its Activity History.
srameshc 1y ago
This is concerning but I am telling my Whatsapp user friends about the access to their immense data that Meta has and they should be concerned. But even the friends in tech, who lead massive product development, feel there is nothing concerning.
- tqi 1y ago
  What do you tell them the risk is?
penguin_booze 1y ago
"What are you going to do, huh?" -- with love, Google.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
devn0ll 1y ago
I just switched to /e/os. Soooo no the fuck they can't! God. That feels good. Everyone should try this.
- microtonal 1y ago
  Or GrapheneOS, the best way to thank Google for making Pixel :). (Until they have their own phone.)
  - zikduruqe 1y ago
    (Until they have their own phone.) ... looks over at Framework
  - theandrewbailey 1y ago
    It felt weird to buy a Google Pixel, only to delete Google from it.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  Unless your counterparty uses Google / Android.
bilekas 1y ago
There seems to be this blatant forcing AI products on people. WhatsApp themselves have an AI feature that you can't turn off or remove. Their only advice is to simply not use it. Is it just a massive push before regulations or are they speed running annoying everyone so much that regulation is the only option?
tempodox 1y ago
If this is true, Zuck will be furious.
Matthias247 1y ago
How does it work technically? Does Whatsapp expose these messages via an API? If yes, then it seems like this is not only on Google. If no: Are they reading data from raw UI widgets? Are they intercepting input controls? Are they intercepting network traffic? That seems unlikely, given its probably end to end encrypted and the decryption happens within the scope of the Whatsapp process.
- netsharc 1y ago
  > If no: Are they reading data from raw UI widgets? Are they intercepting input controls? Why not... they control the OS, it'd be trivial to add hooks to the "draw widget" command to intercept that it's about to draw a text widget for WhatsApp, and then ask it to log the text.
- alok-g 1y ago
  My understanding (may be wrong): WhatsApp data is encrypted, however, the keys are on the device itself and accessible on Android. There are many third-party apps that support transferring WhatsApp data from one phone to another, and some even claim so between Android and iOS devices. As I understand, the chats are in some usual database format. So anyone having access to the device can read the data even without WhatsApp being there itself (as far as the data is there).
  - Anamon 1y ago
    I don't think it's quite as simple as that. The keys are stored in a storage area that Android locks off as WhatsApp's alone; no other app can get to those keys. At the very least you'd need to root your device, but even that might not be quite enough going by my memory of trying to export my chats once. I remember the only documented working path included something like installing a shady, modified APK of a legacy WhatsApp version with an outdated encryption method to a second device and then somehow getting the new app to write a backup in the legacy format, to then restore to the fake second device and decrypt. I quit there because the risk of actually losing my entire backup seemed too high. And that was about five years ago, so I'd assume if anything, it's even more difficult today.
- 1y ago
RachelF 1y ago
WhatsApp by default backs up messages to Google Drive. It has done so for many years. Google likely already has all your chat data.
- shabazahmed 1y ago
  That data is encrypted
  - sabellito 1y ago
    Now it is, but when they offered this feature initially it wasn't, and when they added the feature, you had to go in the options to turn it on. Evil.
shabazahmed 1y ago
May be they are reading the notification using notifications reading service (Feature in Android) and use intents to send messages. But from intent you can either share (user action) a message to a particular contact or automatically open whatsapp on a particular contact and prefill the message in text box. May be whatapp may have exposed an intent to directly send message or they are just prefilling the text box
johnwayne666 1y ago
Any way for other AI apps to do that. It could be nice to have a local open source app doing the same. Does something like that exist?
jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago
This is why we need free software and free phones. I want the software I run to work for me.
Bender 1y ago
Google promises That gave me a good belly laugh. Thankyou Google.
sneak 1y ago
Don’t most people do WhatsApp backups to Google Drive? Google already has your entire chat history.
happosai 1y ago
This really annoys the shit out of me. First people work hard to enable E2E encryption on WhatsApp, then Google goes "lol we'll just upload your chats to Gemini cloud".
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
hulitu 1y ago
> Google can now read your WhatsApp messages Now ? I guess some people really need a reality check. Google controls the OS which runs of your phone and has access to all your data. Just like Apple or Microsoft.
MrDresden 1y ago
Honestly I was surprised not to see an announcement for some kind of agentic API in Android during GIO. Think some kind of combination of content providers and a rest interface, defined by the developers of each app. Having the system level agent needing to interface with the UI in such a messy way doesn't feel like the best way for it to accomplish its tasks.
user568439 1y ago
It looks like a new EU fine is coming... But this time it should come fast because this is unacceptable
KoolKat23 1y ago
Sorry, but hasn't Google Assistant had this same access for the past 10 years? Do you not have to prompt Gemini to initiate any search?
taeric 1y ago
I confess I got a pretty good laugh out of seeing this on the same day I saw billboards bragging that "not even WhatsApp can read your messages." Oops.
- octo888 1y ago
  Probably not a coincidence. Though maybe more to do with their own AI feature and wanting to make people feel OK sharing more data with WhatsApp
DLoupe 1y ago
If you use Google to backup your WhatsApp chats (most people do), Google can already read your messages, because the backup is not encrypted.
- morsch 1y ago
  I think this hasn't been true for a couple of years now https://faq.whatsapp.com/490592613091019 https://faq.whatsapp.com/490592613091019
  - callmeal 1y ago
    Encrypted backups are "off" by default and need to be explicity turned on.
    - morsch 1y ago
      I haven't installed Whatsapp from scratch in a long time, aren't backups off by default, overall?
      - whyoh 1y ago
        They're off by default, but there are regular prompts to enable them and I guess most people eventually do it.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
iku 1y ago
Sorry, but this title sounds overly click-baity to me. Google definitely can’t read or write my WhatsApp messages. Because I’m not using an Android/Google phone with WhatsApp on it. Although I am using both Gemini and WhatsApp, the whole article doesn’t apply to me, and surely I’m not unique in this.
Labov 1y ago
Oof, that's not what the WhatsApp ads on the train station platform say.
dineol 1y ago
just stop using whatsapp
crossroadsguy 1y ago
There are ways to disable Gemini on Android but since we are talking about WhatsApp, let me tell you that there is no way yo disable Meta AI in WhatsApp and of course you were never asked to enable it.
gaia 1y ago
On Pixel phones, it is possible to disable the app "AICore" https://i.imgur.com/BKJWFaj.png https://i.imgur.com/BKJWFaj.png. I assume this disables Gemini also. I will confirm and write back.
workfromspace 1y ago
I guess EU etc.. is too busy picking up on Apple and overlooking such shit from Google and MS.

473 points by bundie 1y ago

> With Gemini Apps Activity turned off, their Gemini chats are not being reviewed or used to improve our AI models. Indeed bizarre as the statement doesn't say much about data collection or retention. More generally, I'm conflicted here -- I'm big on personal privacy but the power & convenience that AI will bring will probably be too great to overcome. I'm hoping that powerful, locally-run AI models will become a mainstream alternative.

bundie 1y ago
Personally, I prefer AI to stay in its own corner. Let ChatGPT, Gemini, and the rest be something I open when I need them, like a website or an app. I'm not really into the whole "everything should have AI built into it" idea. It kind of reminds me of how the internet used to be. Back then, you had to go to a specific room to use the family computer. The internet was something you visited. Now, tech is everywhere, from our pockets to our bathrooms. I’m not sure I want AI following that same path.
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  It's going the opposite direction. AI won't be inside each different thing, instead everything else will be nested under the AI. Like Gemini here. AI will have user-equivalent access to interact with any app. It will be the default and people will not mind it because it's convenient and if you have nothing to hide.
  - pests 1y ago
    What if you do have something to hide?
  - netsharc 1y ago
    Women were sharing their menstruation information with apps, until they surprisingly ended up in a corrupt regime with a corrupt judiciary that weaponizes this information to take away the rights over their own body...
- ryanrasti 1y ago
  Agreed the privacy that keeping AI "in a corner" appeals to me too. The fundamental catch here is that 80%+ of the future benefit will likely come from the very thing that erodes privacy: deep integration and context. Imagine if a Gemini had your entire life in its context (haha scary I know!), prompting would be so much more powerful. That's the core, uncomfortable trade-off we're all facing now.
  - bonoboTP 1y ago
    > Imagine if a Gemini had your entire life in its context (haha scary I know!) Windows Recall [1] is this for your PC activities (not yet fed to AI, but I see no reason to think it will stay this way). Meta is working on glasses to record the IRL part. But your phone is probably enough for most of it. Joining Zoom meetings with AI note takers is getting popular [2]. Not long until in-person meetings will have AI listening in from the phone mics, of course just to increase productivity and to summarize and remind you later. Convenience! [1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/retrace-your-steps-with-recall-aa03f8a0-a78b-4b3e-b0a1-2eb8ac48701c https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/retrace-your-ste... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44446916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44446916
    - SoftTalker 1y ago
      If I can have the AI agent attend the meeting for me in the first place, and then provide me the notes that's the winning play. Take the morning stand-up: all the developers' agents know what they are working on and what any blockers are. They can all exchange information in a virtual AI meeting and then send the notes around. Meanwhile all the developers are getting something productive done.
      - samrus 1y ago
        Reminds me of this https://youtu.be/VcHc54Z_b3w https://youtu.be/VcHc54Z_b3w
  - JohnFen 1y ago
    It's not an uncomfortable tradeoff to me. These systems being deeply integrated is simply too high of a price to pay. I cannot imagine a future benefit so great that it would be worth that.
_verandaguy 1y ago
My approach has been to lock AI assistants (for me, that's just Apple intelligence as far as I can help it) out of integrations with the vast majority of apps, and especially chat and email apps. At some point, some reverse engineer will publish a writeup either confirming or denying how local these models are, how much data (and maybe even what data) is being sent up to the mothership, and how these integrations appear to be implemented. It's not perfect, and it only offers a point-in-time view of the situation, but it's the best we can do in an intensely closed-source world. I'd be happier if these companies published the code (regardless of the license) and allowed users to test for build parity.
stingraycharles 1y ago
Maybe at some point, Apple is/was trying to do everything locally but it appears they have recently decided to move away from that idea and use OpenAI. I can understand why: you’re only using locally-run AI models every so often (maybe a few times a day), but when you use it, you still want it to be fast. So it will need to be a pretty heavy AI chip in your phone to be able to deliver that, which spends most of the time idling. Since compute costs are insane for AI, it only makes sense to optimize this and do the inference in the cloud. Maybe at some point local AI will be possible, but they’ll always be able to run much more powerful models in the cloud, because it makes much more sense from an economics point of view.
- jpalawaga 1y ago
  Google also has AI models optimized to run on phones, they're just in a lot better of a position to actually build purpose-built LLMs for phones. It's not clear to me why certain classes of things still end up farmed out to the cloud (such as this, or is it?). Maybe their LLM hasn't been built in a very pluggable fashion.
- Hizonner 1y ago
  > they have recently decided to move away from that idea and use OpenAI. ... although, to be fair, they're negotiating with OpenAI to run the models in "secure enclaves", which should, assuming everything works right which is a huge assumption, keep Apple or anybody else from reaching inside and seeing what the model is "thinking about".
throwaway290 1y ago
> the power & convenience that AI will bring will probably be too great to overcome What is that power? Honest question...
- bonoboTP 1y ago
  Assistant stuff. Like you bark "order a pepperoni pizza from Joe's Pizza" and it happens. You take a pic of your fridge and say "order stuff to stock it up to my usual levels". Or book a flight, or buy concert tickets or clothes, or get media recommendations, replan a trip while driving if you change your mind and add a stop somewhere. Ask to summarize group chat message floods. Put on some music. Control smart home gadgets. It's hard to predict exactly though. I remember thinking in 2001 that nobody except the busiest businessmen would need a cell phone. A landline at home is perfectly enough and in special cases there are phone booths. And in 2011 I thought the same about smartphones. Why would I need email while walking in the street? Can't it wait until I'm home at the desktop? If I need computer stuff on the go, I can take a laptop. Similarly, I'm not quite sure how exactly it will go but probably in 10 years you'll need to have an AI agent to function in society. The legacy infrastructure decays if nobody uses it even if you'd prefer not to jump on the bandwagon. Today you often MUST have an app downloaded to do things, e.g. some museums require it, sometimes government services are much more tedious otherwise. Some restaurants only have a QR code and no physical menu. Often news items (from school, or local municipality) are only shared in social media. Etc. etc. I can easily imagine that there will be things you can't manually do in 2035, only by asking your AI agent to do it for you. And it will scan all your data to make sure that what you're doing is impeccable in intent and safety and permissibility (like an inverse captcha: you must be Gemini or another approved bot to do the action. As a human you have to jump a million hoops that maybe takes days of providing various details etc. And Gemini will be easy to spook and will be opinionated about whether you should really get to do that action or not.). And it will communicate behind your back with the AI of the other party to decide everything. Or who knows what. But it will be necessary to use.
  - southernplaces7 1y ago
    >Assistant stuff. Like you bark "order a pepperoni pizza from Joe's Pizza" and it happens. You take a pic of your fridge and say "order stuff to stock it up to my usual levels". Or book a flight, or buy concert tickets or clothes, or get media recommendations, replan a trip while driving if you change your mind and add a stop somewhere. Ask to summarize group chat message floods. Put on some music. Control smart home gadgets. Frankly, this sounds like a potential nightmare to me. Almost certainly, the big techCos that today use algorithmic "customer support" to randomly flag, ban and screw with users for completely opaque reasons and little recourse will try running all of the nice things you describe. It's very plausible that sooner or later it will become harder and harder to do any of those things by more conventional, atomic means, making you rely ever more on integrated connections between product/service providers and these ordering systems (it's "convenient", you see?) only to suddenly find yourself flagged, blocked, or banned for any number of idiotic, blandly brainless reasons and shut out of the most basic elements of your daily life. That people would readily agree to sign up for such dependence on these opaque things is a mystery to me, and I hope a huge pushback against it happens at some point. If you think I exaggerate, bear in mind how often such things already happen on a lesser scale in a world where having social media, a smartphone and accounts with services like Google's becomes necessary in some contexts. Also note how often someone or another finds themselves fucked when these existing dependencies suddenly get shut down because some bullshit algorithm supposedly said so. It's also bad enough that payment systems and banking can be cut off to people who (having broken no law at all) hold some politically controversial, publicly activist discourse, or that banking and certain basic services can be withheld in some bizarre way because you live a life in which your residency or other life choices are outside the average. To have the same risks apply for ever more minor reasons across a huge swathe of just living your life is a monstrously insidious way of marginalizing and homogenizing social divergence.

jmclnx 1y ago

If you do not like this, file a complaint with your State's AG. I just did that. I do not use WhatsApp, but I have other apps I do not want google to see.

_verandaguy 1y ago
Not every state(, country, province, region, whatever) has laws that restrict or prohibit this kind of activity. A complaint to a public prosecutor may not be a good option for many people, especially in the US which historically has had very permissive laws about how corporations can handle user data (with some exceptions like the CCPA, though TBD if that legislation would do much here).
IncreasePosts 1y ago
Don't use Gemini then, it seems pretty simple
- jazzyjackson 1y ago
  One doesn't even need to have a google account at all if one doesn't want to do business with them
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- pkilgore 1y ago
  As the article states, "After turning it off, Google will still retain your data for up to 72 hours to "maintain safety and security of Gemini Apps" and allow Gemini to respond contextually."" Which means, AFAICT, it doesn't matter if you turn it off or not, Google still collects information and stores it for 72 hours as part of the core functionality of the operating system.
  - IncreasePosts 1y ago
    That's if you used Gemini with this feature. And if you haven't...?

bsaul 1y ago

how does this work ? Aren't the whatsapp data encrypted locally ?

inerte 1y ago
Screen reader?
- bsaul 1y ago
  oh ok, didn't understand that it was working over a screen capture stream... thanks !
- hnburnsy 1y ago
  Android Accessibility Service https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/accessibility/service https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/accessibility/... >Devices running Android 8.0 (API level 26) and higher include several text-processing features that make it easier for accessibility services to identify and operate on specific units of text that appear on screen.
jazzyjackson 1y ago
yes WhatsApp messages are stored in an encrypted sqlite database. I'm not an android dev so I'm not positive about this but I expect whatsapp is shipping their app with "App Actions" interface giving the assisstant certain actions it can perform, so this is not wholesale database access. See [0] App Actions extend your in-app functionality to Assistant, enabling users to access your app's features by voice. When a user invokes an App Action, Assistant matches the query to a BII declared in your shortcuts.xml resource, launching your app at the requested screen or displaying an Android widget. You declare BIIs in your app using Android capability elements. When you upload your app using the Google Play console, Google registers the capabilities declared in your app and makes them available for users to access from Assistant. https://developer.android.com/develop/devices/assistant/overview https://developer.android.com/develop/devices/assistant/over...
pkilgore 1y ago
You have to unencrypt data to process it and as soon as you do that, the right Kernel APIs are enough to see whatever you want -- here the accessibility APIs are probably enough to read any text you would be able to read.

pengaru 1y ago

e2e encryption is insufficient when you don't control the host, and though you may own your Android/iOS device - the proprietary stack owns you.

bix6 1y ago

These big tech companies are so frustrating. Why does every single aspect of our digital lives need to be monitored? It’s like whack a mole trying to get the most basic of privacy.

saubeidl 1y ago
Because that way they can build profiles of you and use them to manipulate you into buying junk you don't need. That, in turn, makes the line go up and the share holders happy. That's tech capitalism in a nutshell.
- RiverCrochet 1y ago
  Why do I keep getting ads for stuff I can't afford then?
  - dylan604 1y ago
    How else are you going to keep up with the Joneses? They are just looking out for your social wellbeing
  - pengaru 1y ago
    > Why do I keep getting ads for stuff I can't afford then? You must be new here, have you not yet unlocked the wonders of credit card debt?
  - ozgrakkurt 1y ago
    Work more so you can buy more
  - jfyi 1y ago
    I largely get ads for things I already have bought. Otherwise, it's really general demographic stuff that doesn't strike a chord. I assume it's because I don't really browse for buyables unless I have the intent of buying something immediately. On a personal level, I fail entirely to understand the value proposition in web advertising.
  - 1y ago

Liftyee 1y ago

Things like these make me glad to have a Xiaomi phone with their minimal implementation of Google instead of a full on Android phone. I get to avoid this stuff being pushed on me, and I don't use any of the Xiaomi "AI" stuff (which wouldn't support foreign apps anyway). Granted, my data is definitely being sent to Xiaomi analytics, fixed by NextDNS. Re: governmental influence, I'd prefer Chinese to US (then again, that is my ethnicity bias). Recent events make the two governments look more similar than ever.

cesarb 1y ago

The whole situation is still clear as mud to me. What if I don't have the Gemini app installed, how do I get to its configuration screen? Is the component which exfiltrates the data part of the Gemini app, or is it a separate Android component which also has to be removed? What if I didn't receive that email?

Macha 1y ago
> What if I don't have the Gemini app installed, how do I get to its configuration screen? You can search "Gemini" in your settings app.
- cesarb 1y ago
  > You can search "Gemini" in your settings app. Thanks, but that only leads to a screen asking whether I want to enable Gemini. I decline, and it goes back to the previous screen, without opening any settings form.
- flyinghamster 1y ago
  Since I always answered "Not now" when my phone wanted to replace Google Assistant with Gemini, I still have Google Assistant on my phone. When I try to bring up Gemini settings, it will ask me if I want to replace Google Assistant with Gemini, and not give me access to any Gemini-related settings.

nabla9 1y ago

Learn how to disable Gemini AI on Android https://tuta.com/blog/how-to-disable-gemini-on-android https://tuta.com/blog/how-to-disable-gemini-on-android

hueho 1y ago
Don't even know what the product is about, but it went into my shitlist for redirecting me always to a badly machine-translated page, not understanding en-us as a language code in the URL, and not having a language selector.

paxys 1y ago

Gemini being able to read WhatsApp messages (when explicitly asked) and take actions can be convenient. If it does so without prompting or feeds the data back into their model in any way for training - that's a big no.

lucb1e 1y ago
It's apparently obvious to you that "hey Gemini, can you message Mike that I love him?" means the text is first sent to Google and then back to your phone and then by your phone to Mike. This isn't the case for everyone, perhaps also because it's not necessarily that way: https://www.macworld.com/article/678307/how-to-use-siri-offline-on-iphone-and-ipad.html https://www.macworld.com/article/678307/how-to-use-siri-offl... I couldn't find whether tasks related to "reading your messages" (like text to speech while you're driving or so) is a thing Siri does, but it obviously talks to you and if you tell it to send a message then that works offline so evidently there is some access there without needing to first upload it to the assistant's vendor

inerte 1y ago

There's a lot of business happening on WhatsApp. I don't think Google cares that much about the messages I sent to my family (although it helps with profiling and ad targetting) but I bet the real money is understanding what people are buying and how they do commerce in WhatsApp.

gowld 1y ago

If you connect Gemini to Assistant, and connect Assistant to Whatsapp, then you have connected Gemini to Whatsapp. https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/9984245?hl=en https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/9984245?hl=en Documentation is unclear, but it appears Gemini is always connected to Utilities, and Utilities is always connected to Whatsapp, and the data flow between these apps is not documented.

okokwhatever 1y ago

Choose your own adventure: 1. Security > Privacy > Convenience 2. Security > Convenience > Privacy 3. Privacy > Security > Convenience 4. Privacy > Convenience > Security 5. Convenience > Security > Privacy 6. Convenience > Privacy > Security

fsflover 1y ago
> Privacy > Security There's no privacy without security.
- baobun 1y ago
  More precisely, confidentiality is one dimension of information security. It doesnt make sense to put them against each other.

msgodel 1y ago

There is no such thing as privacy on a non-free OS and especially on a non-free OS with a closed app store. We told you this would happen.

Oras 1y ago

I wonder what meta will do, they recently introduced meta ai inside WhatsApp (even though I didn’t enable it, or asked for it), it’s just floating there. With Gemini having access, those who are happy to give AI access to their apps would surely prefer Gemini as it will be phone wide instead of meta ai which only runs inside WhatsApp.

skybrian 1y ago

Do people use Gemini on their phones? Does it do anything if you’re not using it?

iamleppert 1y ago

I don't see what the problem is. If the User doesn't want Gemini to read his or her messages, the User doesn't have to partake in the sending of the messages. Simple! A User agrees to be bound by the ToS (Terms of Service) in having they do take to receive the user agreement as bound in law by Google. The User doesn't need to understand or have the right to contest the agreement or the use of any data created by a User, as the User can simply not use the product or service as governed by the same Google ToS. Simple!

bundie 1y ago
So simple. :-)
bigbacaloa 1y ago
[dead]

jeroenhd 1y ago

Google has been working on this since November last year going by the wayback archive of the support page for this feature. I'm not seeing any indication that Gemini can read your messages, though. You can compose messages and start calls, but I can't get it to read me any of my messages. In fact, I can't even get it to send messages to group chats, only to individual contacts. The feature makes a lot of sense, of course. WhatsApp is to many countries across the globe what texting and calling is to Americans. If your smart assistant can't even interact with WhatsApp, it's basically useless for many people. Edit: ah, that explains why I can't make Gemini read my messages to me, Google's own documentation (https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/15574928 https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/15574928) says it can't: What Gemini can’t do with WhatsApp Read or summarize your messages Add or read images, gifs, or memes in your messages Add or play audio or videos in your messages Read or respond to WhatsApp notifications If you connected Google Assistant to WhatsApp, it seems like data may flow that direction, but then you've already hooked WhatsApp into Google before so I don't think anyone will be surprised there. Does anyone know how I can make Gemini read messages? I can't even find the assistant settings necessary for that stuff to function.

eddythompson80 1y ago
> The Gemini mobile app may support some of these actions with help from Google Assistant or the Utilities app, even with WhatsApp disabled in Gemini. Learn more about Google Assistant features in your Gemini mobile app and actions supported by the Utilities app.
Hizonner 1y ago
What Gemini should be able to do with WhatsApp: Exactly and only what any other random app on the phone could do with WhatsApp, assuming that you have enabled that in exactly the way you would have to enable any other random app to do it. Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source of the OS to give its software special privilege to reach inside of third-party apps.
- kccqzy 1y ago

pier25 1y ago

AI has really accelerated enshitification

Mistletoe 1y ago

In the year 2025 I can’t think of any reason a person would use Signal instead of WhatsApp. All your friends and family should move to Signal if that is your excuse.

ectospheno 1y ago
It was fairly easy to move people I talk with to signal. I stopped responding to anything else. I don’t miss the few people who didn’t adjust.
cosmic_cheese 1y ago
Mostly for QoL and polish, which WhatsApp has the upper hand in. Perhaps most notably, WhatsApp treats desktop as a first-tier platform instead of as an afterthought, which makes its desktop app considerably nicer.
Ylpertnodi 1y ago
> In the year 2025 I can’t think of any reason a person would use Signal instead of WhatsApp. I can. Several, actuallly > All your friends and family should move to Signal if that is your excuse. They did. Those that didn't/won't, do have my telephone number, though.
Mistletoe 1y ago
Ugh I meant *would not* use Signal instead of WhatsApp. Really wish HN didn't seal off edits so fast.

sega_sai 1y ago

The whole situation with Gemini Apps Activity setting is so frustrating. Even if I pay for Gemini Pro, the only way to make sure there will be no human looking at your chats is to set Apps Activity to off, which means you don't have any history for Gemini chats, even for the messages from a minute ago.

bionhoward 1y ago
It’s absurdly dumb, agreed
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
Barbing 1y ago
Reminiscent of their heavy handed approach to disabling watch history on YouTube, even when paying for YouTube Premium. (Google punishes viewers who make themselves less valuable to advertisers by giving them an entirely blank homepage.)
- kccqzy 1y ago
  It's not a punishment; it's entirely transactional. You make yourself less valuable to advertisers so you also make yourself less valuable to Google. Therefore Google provides you with fewer features such as a blank homepage. The era of Google providing costly features to users with no benefit to itself is coming to an end.
  - T4iga 1y ago
    Except you missed that part where they said > Premium If you pay for it, you can expect to not be the product.
    - AlexandrB 1y ago
      I think that ship sailed a few years ago. It's better for big tech if you pay and be the product so they went ahead and did that.

Macha 1y ago

Apparently, my personal account being a gsuite account is to my benefit this time as "your administrator has not enabled access to Gemini for your account".

7373737373 1y ago

I hope the EU sues the shit/existence out of them for exfiltrating private conversations and violating the secrecy of correspondence without explicit consent Tech corporations and their managers are basically data rapists

vaylian 1y ago
> for exfiltrating private conversations and violating the secrecy of correspondence without explicit consent I have bad news for you: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-control/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co... The EU wants to exfiltrate chats as well.
- actionfromafar 1y ago
  That is very bad. The EU is very much not a monolith though, and both things could happen at once.

beagle3 1y ago

WhatsApp backup on your Google account contains all your message history, and is unencrypted. If you use google cloud backup for your phone, Google can read your WhatsApp messages, and has been able to do so for more than 5 years now.

jadamson 1y ago
There's an option to enable end-to-end encryption on your backups. https://faq.whatsapp.com/490592613091019 https://faq.whatsapp.com/490592613091019
- beagle3 1y ago
  Nice. It wasn’t there last time I checked. I wonder what percentage of WhatsApp users backup to Google cloud, and what percentage of those use encryption.
- brinerustle 1y ago
  It is safe to say, optional services get little adoption. Look at email, of the tens of billions of email addresses, there are orders of magnitude lower numbers of pgp or gpg keys. Similar experience with telegram encrypted chats. So having the option of e2ee in a communication platform, is not having it in practice.

nicce 1y ago

More surprising is that people think this is the first time - be default your WhatsApp backups are unencrypted by default so they have had the access for long time for large part of the userbase. Also primary reason why WhatsApp hasn’t been a problem for law enforcements.

hbn 1y ago

People have been clowning on Apple for being behind on the AI stuff and -- while I'd never defend how they promised a bunch of features in 2024, showed them in ads, and sold iPhones based on vaporware, but still haven't shipped most of the features -- I will say, I imagine a lot of the hold-up is because they realized how dangerous it is to start trusting AI with the sensitive data on your phone. It's probably not too hard to make it work most of the time, but even if there's a 0.0001% chance the AI will send a sensitive image meant for your wife to your boss, you should probably reconsider shipping. I don't believe Google has the tact to care as long as they look like a market competitor in something.

bapak 1y ago
> even if there's a 0.0001% chance the AI will send a sensitive image meant for your wife to your boss, you should probably reconsider shipping. Not the best example since Siri has been misunderstanding us for many, many years. You really meant to send that I love you to Louis coworker, right? Not to "Love"? Too late
- LeoPanthera 1y ago
  > You really meant to send that I love you to Louis coworker, right? Not to "Love"? Too late Why make up stuff like this? Siri confirms everything that sends data.
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    That's not quite true, especially if you're using something like CarPlay. I have personally had this interaction: Me: Hey Siri, text Jen [my wife] I love you. Siri: OK, texting Johnny Chan [my ex-boss] I love you. Me: What NO! Johnny: Uh... That happened. It's not something I read about or made up. It went pretty much exactly like that.
    - averageRoyalty 1y ago
      This is a setting under Settings > Siri & Search > Automatically send messages. It's disabled by default, but it's possible you turned it on by accident or got a bad default setting I suppose.

sschueller 1y ago

Why does Whatsapp allow this? It defeats their whole encryption Spiel.

brinerustle 1y ago
because whatsapp is owned by meta, and their business model is to monetize our data. The agreement between google and meta is not public, but we can be sure it was to monetize our data.
bspammer 1y ago
No amount of in-transit encryption can help when google controls the OS.

ivell 1y ago

Being unable to easily uninstall is quite annoying. Reminds me of the old Microsoft with their deep integration of Internet Explorer into the OS.

saidinesh5 1y ago

Not exactly related, but does anyone know what's the best way to backup WhatsApp data on an Android phone without using Google drive these days?

ilpianista 1y ago
I use Syncthing to backup WA and Signal
- amlib 1y ago
  But isn't it quite useless to backup WA when it's all encrypted and you can't backup the key?
  - ilpianista 1y ago
    The backup key is shown the first time you enable encryption.
    - fransje26 1y ago
      Would you happen to have good resources detailing the process?
      - ilpianista 1y ago
        Pretty much what I summarized back in 2019: https://scarpino.dev/posts/automated-phone-backup-with-syncthing.html https://scarpino.dev/posts/automated-phone-backup-with-synct... Nowayadays Syncthing is no more maintained due to some PlayStore drama, but Syncthing-Fork is a good replacement.
        fransje26 1y ago
        I'll start from there, thanks!
        saidinesh5 1y ago

declan_roberts 1y ago

At least Google users get a usable AI for all of their phones spying. Siri can't even pronounce my own name correctly!

qwertox 1y ago

Just a kind reminder that you can't delete chats on Gemini if you're using a Google Workspace account. I don't know how they believe that this is remotely a good thing, or if this is even in accordance with the GDPR. Now just assume something odd happens and it pulls in a couple of your WhatsApp messages into its Activity History.

srameshc 1y ago

This is concerning but I am telling my Whatsapp user friends about the access to their immense data that Meta has and they should be concerned. But even the friends in tech, who lead massive product development, feel there is nothing concerning.

tqi 1y ago
What do you tell them the risk is?

penguin_booze 1y ago

"What are you going to do, huh?" -- with love, Google.

deleted 1y ago

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devn0ll 1y ago

I just switched to /e/os. Soooo no the fuck they can't! God. That feels good. Everyone should try this.

microtonal 1y ago
Or GrapheneOS, the best way to thank Google for making Pixel :). (Until they have their own phone.)
- zikduruqe 1y ago
  (Until they have their own phone.) ... looks over at Framework
- theandrewbailey 1y ago
  It felt weird to buy a Google Pixel, only to delete Google from it.
jacquesm 1y ago
Unless your counterparty uses Google / Android.

bilekas 1y ago

There seems to be this blatant forcing AI products on people. WhatsApp themselves have an AI feature that you can't turn off or remove. Their only advice is to simply not use it. Is it just a massive push before regulations or are they speed running annoying everyone so much that regulation is the only option?

tempodox 1y ago

If this is true, Zuck will be furious.

Matthias247 1y ago

How does it work technically? Does Whatsapp expose these messages via an API? If yes, then it seems like this is not only on Google. If no: Are they reading data from raw UI widgets? Are they intercepting input controls? Are they intercepting network traffic? That seems unlikely, given its probably end to end encrypted and the decryption happens within the scope of the Whatsapp process.

netsharc 1y ago
> If no: Are they reading data from raw UI widgets? Are they intercepting input controls? Why not... they control the OS, it'd be trivial to add hooks to the "draw widget" command to intercept that it's about to draw a text widget for WhatsApp, and then ask it to log the text.
alok-g 1y ago
My understanding (may be wrong): WhatsApp data is encrypted, however, the keys are on the device itself and accessible on Android. There are many third-party apps that support transferring WhatsApp data from one phone to another, and some even claim so between Android and iOS devices. As I understand, the chats are in some usual database format. So anyone having access to the device can read the data even without WhatsApp being there itself (as far as the data is there).
- Anamon 1y ago
  I don't think it's quite as simple as that. The keys are stored in a storage area that Android locks off as WhatsApp's alone; no other app can get to those keys. At the very least you'd need to root your device, but even that might not be quite enough going by my memory of trying to export my chats once. I remember the only documented working path included something like installing a shady, modified APK of a legacy WhatsApp version with an outdated encryption method to a second device and then somehow getting the new app to write a backup in the legacy format, to then restore to the fake second device and decrypt. I quit there because the risk of actually losing my entire backup seemed too high. And that was about five years ago, so I'd assume if anything, it's even more difficult today.
1y ago

RachelF 1y ago

WhatsApp by default backs up messages to Google Drive. It has done so for many years. Google likely already has all your chat data.

shabazahmed 1y ago
That data is encrypted
- sabellito 1y ago
  Now it is, but when they offered this feature initially it wasn't, and when they added the feature, you had to go in the options to turn it on. Evil.

shabazahmed 1y ago

May be they are reading the notification using notifications reading service (Feature in Android) and use intents to send messages. But from intent you can either share (user action) a message to a particular contact or automatically open whatsapp on a particular contact and prefill the message in text box. May be whatapp may have exposed an intent to directly send message or they are just prefilling the text box

johnwayne666 1y ago

Any way for other AI apps to do that. It could be nice to have a local open source app doing the same. Does something like that exist?

jxjnskkzxxhx 1y ago

This is why we need free software and free phones. I want the software I run to work for me.

Bender 1y ago

Google promises That gave me a good belly laugh. Thankyou Google.

sneak 1y ago

Don’t most people do WhatsApp backups to Google Drive? Google already has your entire chat history.

happosai 1y ago

This really annoys the shit out of me. First people work hard to enable E2E encryption on WhatsApp, then Google goes "lol we'll just upload your chats to Gemini cloud".

deleted 1y ago
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hulitu 1y ago

> Google can now read your WhatsApp messages Now ? I guess some people really need a reality check. Google controls the OS which runs of your phone and has access to all your data. Just like Apple or Microsoft.

MrDresden 1y ago

Honestly I was surprised not to see an announcement for some kind of agentic API in Android during GIO. Think some kind of combination of content providers and a rest interface, defined by the developers of each app. Having the system level agent needing to interface with the UI in such a messy way doesn't feel like the best way for it to accomplish its tasks.

user568439 1y ago

It looks like a new EU fine is coming... But this time it should come fast because this is unacceptable

KoolKat23 1y ago

Sorry, but hasn't Google Assistant had this same access for the past 10 years? Do you not have to prompt Gemini to initiate any search?

taeric 1y ago

I confess I got a pretty good laugh out of seeing this on the same day I saw billboards bragging that "not even WhatsApp can read your messages." Oops.

octo888 1y ago
Probably not a coincidence. Though maybe more to do with their own AI feature and wanting to make people feel OK sharing more data with WhatsApp

DLoupe 1y ago

If you use Google to backup your WhatsApp chats (most people do), Google can already read your messages, because the backup is not encrypted.

morsch 1y ago
I think this hasn't been true for a couple of years now https://faq.whatsapp.com/490592613091019 https://faq.whatsapp.com/490592613091019
- callmeal 1y ago
  Encrypted backups are "off" by default and need to be explicity turned on.
  - morsch 1y ago
    I haven't installed Whatsapp from scratch in a long time, aren't backups off by default, overall?
    - whyoh 1y ago
      They're off by default, but there are regular prompts to enable them and I guess most people eventually do it.

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iku 1y ago

Sorry, but this title sounds overly click-baity to me. Google definitely can’t read or write my WhatsApp messages. Because I’m not using an Android/Google phone with WhatsApp on it. Although I am using both Gemini and WhatsApp, the whole article doesn’t apply to me, and surely I’m not unique in this.

Labov 1y ago

Oof, that's not what the WhatsApp ads on the train station platform say.

dineol 1y ago

just stop using whatsapp

crossroadsguy 1y ago

There are ways to disable Gemini on Android but since we are talking about WhatsApp, let me tell you that there is no way yo disable Meta AI in WhatsApp and of course you were never asked to enable it.

gaia 1y ago

On Pixel phones, it is possible to disable the app "AICore" https://i.imgur.com/BKJWFaj.png https://i.imgur.com/BKJWFaj.png. I assume this disables Gemini also. I will confirm and write back.

workfromspace 1y ago

I guess EU etc.. is too busy picking up on Apple and overlooking such shit from Google and MS.