The advertising industry has more than 650,000 labels to target people. Reading through them reveals how even the most sensitive aspects of our life are monitored. EU-based data brokers play a vital role in this system.
If you’ve given WhatsApp your mobile number, then it’s your fault that Facebook can read and analyse everything you’ve said to anyone on WhatsApp, connected to a near-perfectly unique ID against your name.
But it’s end to end encrypted, so I doubt Whatsapp is able to read any messaging content. The meta data (who is contacting who, when from where) is probably worth enough for them already.
Has that ever been independently verified? I remember the WhatsApp founders quit over FB policy to use messages for advertising, but perhaps they’ve changed course on that. You’re right, the metadata alone would be insanely valuable.
Don’t think so, but it would be highly illegal in the EU if they would. Also kinda stupid, because they can gather enough information without reading message contents, like u said as well.
Meta is claiming that it’s end-to-end encrypted, however, WhatsApp is proprietary (no-one can check how it’s implemented) and I’m not aware of any auditing ever being done. You just have to take their word for it. For a long time, the automatic message backups were all unencrypted and stored on Google or Apple Cloud, so that was the most obvious backdoor they implemented. I’m not sure how they are doing it now.
Claiming that something is encrypted gives participants a false sense of security, in which they would say more than they would normally do if they knew that their messages are public. The Crypto AG and Operation Rubicon is a great example of backdoored encryption, sold by intelligence companies.
Fair point about the backups, but I was mostly referring to the messaging aspect. As far as I know they use signals e2e encryption protocol, so it should be fine for personal use. Would also be illegal for Meta to use message contents for anything really, as they say they don’t.
If we are talking about activism, politics and so on, then surely Whatsapp is not enough. But I was mostly talking about the ad-related context.
But it’s end to end encrypted, so I doubt Whatsapp is able to read any messaging content. The meta data (who is contacting who, when from where) is probably worth enough for them already.
Has that ever been independently verified? I remember the WhatsApp founders quit over FB policy to use messages for advertising, but perhaps they’ve changed course on that. You’re right, the metadata alone would be insanely valuable.
Don’t think so, but it would be highly illegal in the EU if they would. Also kinda stupid, because they can gather enough information without reading message contents, like u said as well.
Meta is claiming that it’s end-to-end encrypted, however, WhatsApp is proprietary (no-one can check how it’s implemented) and I’m not aware of any auditing ever being done. You just have to take their word for it. For a long time, the automatic message backups were all unencrypted and stored on Google or Apple Cloud, so that was the most obvious backdoor they implemented. I’m not sure how they are doing it now.
Claiming that something is encrypted gives participants a false sense of security, in which they would say more than they would normally do if they knew that their messages are public. The Crypto AG and Operation Rubicon is a great example of backdoored encryption, sold by intelligence companies.
Fair point about the backups, but I was mostly referring to the messaging aspect. As far as I know they use signals e2e encryption protocol, so it should be fine for personal use. Would also be illegal for Meta to use message contents for anything really, as they say they don’t.
If we are talking about activism, politics and so on, then surely Whatsapp is not enough. But I was mostly talking about the ad-related context.