[smc-discuss] Facebook and Google spy on you

[Akshay S Dinesh]

WhatsAPI and WhatsApp are arch enemies (is what I thought).

On Wed, Nov 19, 2014 at 1:58 PM, Anivar Aravind <anivar.aravind at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
>
> 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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