Re: “Localhost tracking” explained. It could cost Meta 32 billion.

On 2025-06-15 05:42, Marion wrote:

On Sat, 14 Jun 2025 23:48:24 +0200, Carlos E.R. wrote :
 

That WhatsApp has been affected by this security leak is still unclear.
The author of the article I posted doesn't know. Facebook and Instagram
yes, certainly. But WhatsApp promises encrypted communications are kept
private, end to end encryption. Listening to them would be a major
breach of trust (except with a court order). This is not the same with
Facebook, which is intended to publish things.

 Thanks Carlos for summarizing as I am also unclear what the privacy
implications are. I don't use FB or Instagram but my kids and grandkids use
Snapchat and Telegram.
 Let's hope the courts handle this efficiently.
 Thanks for keeping us informed as I was blissfully unaware of this issue.
 I saw Richmond's response just before sending this where the problem is
*replacing* WhatsApp where it's not so hard to get my family to use, oh,
say, Google Voice, but is that any safer? I use Google Voice but only on
the iPad (because Google adds an account on the Android phone if you use GV
on Android but Google can't do that on an iOS device - heh heh heh).
 The problem is the Europeans all use WhatsApp daily.
 To Richmond's suggestion, how do I get the relatives in Germany to use
something else?

You can't.
You can get one conversation, I mean, not really one correspondent, to switch to something else. There is Telegram, Signal, Threema, even RCS. To have everybody agree on one, that's much more difficult.
And that one correspondent will probably will still be using WA with other correspondents. That's highly inconvenient.
(I have all those IM apps installed (except Threema), but nobody is using them with me)
(On signal I get unknown girls saying Hi. Ask the police, these requests are not safe).
Oh, and there are news that WS will have commercials. They have been saying this for decades, almost. They said it would be payware, then it wasn't. But adverts will not be related to the conversations. Interestingly, they said that if you have installed Facebook and/or Instagram, information from them will be used for the adverts. So still there is something that limits Meta in getting information out of WhatsApp, which is good.
--
Cheers, Carlos.