[smc-discuss] Facebook and Google spy on you

[Anivar Aravind]

On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 1:51 PM, Pirate Praveen <praveen at onenetbeyond.org>
wrote:

> On Wednesday 19 November 2014 11:43 AM, Anivar Aravind wrote:
> >
> >     Open Whisper Systems partners with WhatsApp to provide end-to-end
> >     encryption
> >
> > https://whispersystems.org/blog/whatsapp/
> >
> >
> > A comment on that post
> >
> >
> > The client sees the data. The app sees the data since the app does the
> > encryption. If they gather all they need, keywords, patterns, location
> > data etc from the message at the app level and send it to whatsapp
> > server, whatsapp can claim that their servers cannot see your messages
> > in the literal sense, but they pretty much are not giving up anything.
> > They simply moved their user data collection from server to the app.
> >
> > If you text "got some new lingerie at macy's" They can still profile you
> > as a female, probably 25-35 age group in XXX city, income likely at 40 -
> > 80 K unmarried, shops at macys or equivalent.
> >
> > If your next text is "cost me 200$" your income will be revised from
> > 40-80 to 60 - 100 K
> >
> > That is big data. Continuously learning about a users interests by their
> > messages. After a year they will know more about you more than your
> > husband or friend does.
> >
> > All this so that they can sell the same to advertisers. Your profile
> > data is passed along btw sites as tracking cookies and everyone knows to
> > show you lingerie ads instead of golf gear.
> >
> > Now they identify you with a number instead of a name. Example user no
> > xxxxx instead of sylvie. Now they can claim we only collect anonymized
> > data. But remember they can clearly tie you to different machines you
> > use and places you usually are at.
> >
> > This is why whatsapp was bought for 20 billion dollars. For the 1
> > billion messages sent per month that lest them study their usage
> patterns.
> >
>
> This is great news! The issue of app is an easier problem to solve and
> we are expert at - reverse engineering and building Free Software apps
> that don't track. In this case TextSecure is already an open protocol
> and it already has Free Software clients, so all we need to do is choose
> a Free Software app for whatsapp. The harder part was the network/users
> and that is won!
>


Looks like they are in the process of building a oauth based client at
https://web.whatsapp.com/

take a look at *https://github.com/mgp25/WhatsAPI-Official/wiki/WhatsApp-incoming-updates
<https://github.com/mgp25/WhatsAPI-Official/wiki/WhatsApp-incoming-updates>
*
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