Facebook Is Not Spying on WhatsApp. Is Not
It hit me that the pressure on Facebook to stop this from happening is paradoxically forcing them to actually spy on people in a way they currently are not. What I mean by this is that in order to rule out any recommendations based on a coincidence or double reveal, they actually would YES have to spy on their users. Yes spy on users, in order to avoid the supposed creepiness. So that then they can see, oh this user claimed on Whatsapp he enjoys eating cat food (this is my go-to example for Whatsapp alleged creepiness), let's make sure not to show any ads for cat food so he doesn't freak out. And for those purposes double reveals and coincidences are identical, they both require mining the Whatsapp messages to identify them because they both appear on Whatsapp messages.
Forget completely about the impact on ads of showing users ads about anything except what they want, which is a real concern for Facebook. It's a for-profit company after all, it is meant to care about that.
But no matter, focus only on how public pressure affects them: the public is basically forcing them to do precisely the misdeed they are not doing, that they are accused of doing, in order to appease its accusers.
Food for thought.
6 comments
[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 27.5 ms ] threadAdd a contact on WhatsApp and have a chat with them. Within 3 days the person you had a chat with will be in your “people you may know” list on Facebook.
Just because they don’t see the message content doesn’t mean they are not using whatever information is still at their disposal for whatever use they please.
Based on history and actions, Facebook has proven itself to be totally driven by greed.
The only reasonable assumption is that any info available to them, they will eventually use to their advantage. Simply because they always have.
*Believing* otherwise is just wishful thinking with little actual basis in reality. Facebook didn't pay $19 billion for WhatsApp without expectations and intentions of a significant return.
What they can do, and do do, is collect and read metadata. This metadata will contain info like who you're messaging, when you message, whether you call or text, probably contains approximate or precise geolocation data.
All of this data in aggregate is content by itself.
Facebook don't really care what is in your messages, they can infer all sorts of things from metadata that is useful for advertising.
As an example: 2 people in different parts of the city exchange messages and calls through the day for several years. Then one day, their locations converge in a single new place most of the time and the number of exchanged messages drops significantly. You can probably infer here that the 2 people are a couple and have moved in together. They are likely to want new furniture and the likes and so they will likely see lots of furniture adverts. I wouldn't be surprised if they also saw adverts for childcare , baby things, insurance etc.
You really don't *know* this.
The app is not open source so they can send anything they want to their servers --- including the decryption key.
Any executable connecting with Facebook has the potential to facilitate privacy invasion in any number of different ways.
https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/chrome_meta_token/