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Univ. of New Haven Cyber Lab: WhatsApp Collects Phone Numbers, Call Duration, and More
An anonymous reader writes: A recent network forensic examination of popular messaging service WhatsApp at the University of New Haven's Cyber Forensics Research & Education Group is offering new details on the data that can be collected from the app's network from its new calling feature: such as phone numbers and phone call duration, and highlights areas for future research and study. The researchers provided an outline of the WhatsApp messaging protocol from a networking perspective, making it possible to explore and study WhatsApp network communications. (Also noted at The Register.)
What a surprise!
Apps!
This isn't possible on iOS. Probably the only good thing iOS has going for it.
Seriously, everybody knows that WhatsApp was shite, is shite and will forever be shite. It does not matter. Everybody uses it, so everybody keeps using it. You would have to pay people to make them switch. It's not going to happen.
Is that like a computer lab?
I bet hipsters are involved in this, somehow.
Obvious is obvious is obvious and a waste of time, no ?
When you have access to this much data, it's hard to resist tapping into it one way or another. It's human nature; another type of hoarding even if it's benign. That's why the more privacy-centric solutions out there actively burn the bridges for themselves using encryption, p2p, etc.
Probably because Facebook is part of the Israeli intelligence apparatus. This is the same data collected by Amdocs, the Israeli company that handles virtually all records for land lines (http://www.tomflocco.com/fs/HouseHidesIsraeliTelSpying.htm)
Didn't my phone come with one preloaded? Why on earth would I need to get a new app to do what my phone already supports?
...Being tracked by Zuk
I'm generally pretty privacy concious (use a VPN for all browsing, self destructing cookies, fake accounts everywhere, no account for Facebook, Twitter, etc). However, with your phone it's impossible to avoid being tracked by Google and Facebook. I have no mobile data plan and keep my Wifi off most of the time, but I still suspect they get a lot of data on me.
Windows has gone in the same direction and it's impossible to use that without being tracked by Microsoft. Linux is the only remaining option for anyone with concerns about privacy. Sadly, most people don't have any concerns about privacy and don't realise how they can be harmed and exploited through their data.
I think the privacy war is over, and we lost.
If you aren't paying for a service, you aren't the customer. You're the product being sold.
Can someone replace the Net-Security link with the original source: http://www.newhaven.edu/news-e... Those infosec professionals just copy-pasted the original text on their website and are passing it as their own.
FACEBOOK collects that stuff.
They do it via Whatsapp.
I use whatapp on my 50$ fire and I had to use a used simcard to activate it, since apparently whatsapp "doesn't work on tablets" but I didn't know that. :-)
I had bought a a few dozen used prepaid simcards on ebay just for these purposes, to receive a single SMS before throwing it away.
Lots of sites have begun to use such systems and this is the way to circumvent that.
It's cheaper than burner phones.
If researchers were able to crack encryption, it means crooks can do it too.
Not only this app spy on its user on behalf of its creator, but it can also be used by third parties.
They must have been aware of this when they struck a deal with Whatsapp and gave it legitimacy.