[HN Gopher] Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
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Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
Author : bundie
Score : 403 points
Date : 2025-07-08 16:11 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.neowin.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.neowin.net)
| ryanrasti wrote:
| > With Gemini Apps Activity turned off, their Gemini chats are
| not being reviewed or used to improve our AI models.
|
| Indeed bizarre as the statement doesn't say much about data
| collection or retention.
|
| More generally, I'm conflicted here -- I'm big on personal
| privacy but the power & convenience that AI will bring will
| probably be too great to overcome. I'm hoping that powerful,
| locally-run AI models will become a mainstream alternative.
| bundie wrote:
| Personally, I prefer AI to stay in its own corner. Let ChatGPT,
| Gemini, and the rest be something I open when I need them, like
| a website or an app. I'm not really into the whole "everything
| should have AI built into it" idea.
|
| It kind of reminds me of how the internet used to be. Back
| then, you had to go to a specific room to use the family
| computer. The internet was something you visited. Now, tech is
| everywhere, from our pockets to our bathrooms. I'm not sure I
| want AI following that same path.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| It's going the opposite direction. AI won't be inside each
| different thing, instead everything else will be nested under
| the AI. Like Gemini here. AI will have user-equivalent access
| to interact with any app. It will be the default and people
| will not mind it because it's convenient and if you have
| nothing to hide.
| pests wrote:
| What if you do have something to hide?
| netsharc wrote:
| Women were sharing their menstruation information with
| apps, until they surprisingly ended up in a corrupt regime
| with a corrupt judiciary that weaponizes this information
| to take away the rights over their own body...
| ryanrasti wrote:
| Agreed the privacy that keeping AI "in a corner" appeals to
| me too.
|
| The fundamental catch here is that 80%+ of the future benefit
| will likely come from the very thing that erodes privacy:
| deep integration and context. Imagine if a Gemini had your
| entire life in its context (haha scary I know!), prompting
| would be so much more powerful.
|
| That's the core, uncomfortable trade-off we're all facing
| now.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| > Imagine if a Gemini had your entire life in its context
| (haha scary I know!)
|
| Windows Recall [1] is this for your PC activities (not yet
| fed to AI, but I see no reason to think it will stay this
| way). Meta is working on glasses to record the IRL part.
| But your phone is probably enough for most of it. Joining
| Zoom meetings with AI note takers is getting popular [2].
| Not long until in-person meetings will have AI listening in
| from the phone mics, of course just to increase
| productivity and to summarize and remind you later.
| Convenience!
|
| [1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/retrace-
| your-ste... [2]
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44446916
| SoftTalker wrote:
| If I can have the AI agent attend the meeting for me in
| the first place, and then provide me the notes that's the
| winning play. Take the morning stand-up: all the
| developers' agents know what they are working on and what
| any blockers are. They can all exchange information in a
| virtual AI meeting and then send the notes around.
| Meanwhile all the developers are getting something
| productive done.
| samrus wrote:
| Reminds me of this https://youtu.be/VcHc54Z_b3w
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's not an uncomfortable tradeoff to me. These systems
| being deeply integrated is simply too high of a price to
| pay. I cannot imagine a future benefit so great that it
| would be worth that.
| _verandaguy wrote:
| My approach has been to lock AI assistants (for me, that's just
| Apple intelligence as far as I can help it) out of integrations
| with the vast majority of apps, and especially chat and email
| apps.
|
| At some point, some reverse engineer will publish a writeup
| either confirming or denying how local these models are, how
| much data (and maybe even _what_ data) is being sent up to the
| mothership, and how these integrations appear to be
| implemented.
|
| It's not perfect, and it only offers a point-in-time view of
| the situation, but it's the best we can do in an intensely
| closed-source world. I'd be happier if these companies
| published the code (regardless of the license) and allowed
| users to test for build parity.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| Maybe at some point, Apple is/was trying to do everything
| locally but it appears they have recently decided to move away
| from that idea and use OpenAI.
|
| I can understand why: you're only using locally-run AI models
| every so often (maybe a few times a day), but when you use it,
| you still want it to be fast.
|
| So it will need to be a pretty heavy AI chip in your phone to
| be able to deliver that, which spends most of the time idling.
|
| Since compute costs are insane for AI, it only makes sense to
| optimize this and do the inference in the cloud.
|
| Maybe at some point local AI will be possible, but they'll
| always be able to run much more powerful models in the cloud,
| because it makes much more sense from an economics point of
| view.
| jpalawaga wrote:
| Google also has AI models optimized to run on phones, they're
| just in a lot better of a position to actually build purpose-
| built LLMs for phones.
|
| It's not clear to me why certain classes of things still end
| up farmed out to the cloud (such as this, or is it?). Maybe
| their LLM hasn't been built in a very pluggable fashion.
| Hizonner wrote:
| > they have recently decided to move away from that idea and
| use OpenAI.
|
| ... although, to be fair, they're negotiating with OpenAI to
| run the models in "secure enclaves", which should, _assuming
| everything works right which is a huge assumption_ , keep
| Apple or anybody else from reaching inside and seeing what
| the model is "thinking about".
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > the power & convenience that AI will bring will probably be
| too great to overcome
|
| What is that power? Honest question...
| bonoboTP wrote:
| Assistant stuff. Like you bark "order a pepperoni pizza from
| Joe's Pizza" and it happens. You take a pic of your fridge
| and say "order stuff to stock it up to my usual levels". Or
| book a flight, or buy concert tickets or clothes, or get
| media recommendations, replan a trip while driving if you
| change your mind and add a stop somewhere. Ask to summarize
| group chat message floods. Put on some music. Control smart
| home gadgets.
|
| It's hard to predict exactly though. I remember thinking in
| 2001 that nobody except the busiest businessmen would need a
| cell phone. A landline at home is perfectly enough and in
| special cases there are phone booths. And in 2011 I thought
| the same about smartphones. Why would I need email while
| walking in the street? Can't it wait until I'm home at the
| desktop? If I need computer stuff on the go, I can take a
| laptop. Similarly, I'm not quite sure how exactly it will go
| but probably in 10 years you'll need to have an AI agent to
| function in society. The legacy infrastructure decays if
| nobody uses it even if you'd prefer not to jump on the
| bandwagon. Today you often MUST have an app downloaded to do
| things, e.g. some museums require it, sometimes government
| services are much more tedious otherwise. Some restaurants
| only have a QR code and no physical menu. Often news items
| (from school, or local municipality) are only shared in
| social media. Etc. etc. I can easily imagine that there will
| be things you can't manually do in 2035, only by asking your
| AI agent to do it for you. And it will scan all your data to
| make sure that what you're doing is impeccable in intent and
| safety and permissibility (like an inverse captcha: you must
| be Gemini or another approved bot to do the action. As a
| human you have to jump a million hoops that maybe takes days
| of providing various details etc. And Gemini will be easy to
| spook and will be opinionated about whether you should really
| get to do that action or not.). And it will communicate
| behind your back with the AI of the other party to decide
| everything. Or who knows what. But it will be necessary to
| use.
| jmclnx wrote:
| If you do not like this, file a complaint with your State's AG. I
| just did that.
|
| I do not use WhatsApp, but I have other apps I do not want google
| to see.
| _verandaguy wrote:
| Not every state(, country, province, region, whatever) has laws
| that restrict or prohibit this kind of activity. A complaint to
| a public prosecutor may not be a good option for many people,
| especially in the US which historically has had very permissive
| laws about how corporations can handle user data (with some
| exceptions like the CCPA, though TBD if that legislation would
| do much here).
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Don't use Gemini then, it seems pretty simple
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| One doesn't even need to have a google account at all if one
| doesn't want to do business with them
| pkilgore wrote:
| As the article states, "After turning it off, Google will
| still retain your data for up to 72 hours to "maintain safety
| and security of Gemini Apps" and allow Gemini to respond
| contextually.""
|
| Which means, AFAICT, it doesn't matter if you turn it off or
| not, Google still collects information and stores it for 72
| hours as part of the core functionality of the operating
| system.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| That's if you used Gemini with this feature. And if you
| haven't...?
| bsaul wrote:
| how does this work ? Aren't the whatsapp data encrypted locally ?
| inerte wrote:
| Screen reader?
| bsaul wrote:
| oh ok, didn't understand that it was working over a screen
| capture stream... thanks !
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| yes WhatsApp messages are stored in an encrypted sqlite
| database.
|
| I'm not an android dev so I'm not positive about this but I
| expect whatsapp is shipping their app with "App Actions"
| interface giving the assisstant certain actions it can perform,
| so this is not wholesale database access. See [0]
|
| _App Actions extend your in-app functionality to Assistant,
| enabling users to access your app 's features by voice. When a
| user invokes an App Action, Assistant matches the query to a
| BII declared in your shortcuts.xml resource, launching your app
| at the requested screen or displaying an Android widget.
|
| You declare BIIs in your app using Android capability elements.
| When you upload your app using the Google Play console, Google
| registers the capabilities declared in your app and makes them
| available for users to access from Assistant._
|
| https://developer.android.com/develop/devices/assistant/over...
| pkilgore wrote:
| You have to unencrypt data to process it and as soon as you do
| that, the right Kernel APIs are enough to see whatever you want
| -- here the accessibility APIs are probably enough to read any
| text you would be able to read.
| bsaul wrote:
| another person in the thread suggests it's working over a
| screen capture stream. But that's what i'm wondering : are
| they working over a video of the screen or by integrating
| directly with the internals of the OS.
| jadamson wrote:
| The more likely candidate is reading notifications, no?
| bonoboTP wrote:
| If Android can render the messages, Google must have a way to
| access them.
| pengaru wrote:
| e2e encryption is insufficient when you don't control the host,
| and though you may own your Android/iOS device - the proprietary
| stack owns you.
| bix6 wrote:
| These big tech companies are so frustrating. Why does every
| single aspect of our digital lives need to be monitored? It's
| like whack a mole trying to get the most basic of privacy.
| saubeidl wrote:
| Because that way they can build profiles of you and use them to
| manipulate you into buying junk you don't need. That, in turn,
| makes the line go up and the share holders happy.
|
| That's tech capitalism in a nutshell.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| Why do I keep getting ads for stuff I can't afford then?
| dylan604 wrote:
| How else are you going to keep up with the Joneses? They
| are just looking out for your social wellbeing
| pengaru wrote:
| > Why do I keep getting ads for stuff I can't afford then?
|
| You must be new here, have you not yet unlocked the wonders
| of credit card debt?
| ozgrakkurt wrote:
| Work more so you can buy more
| bakugo wrote:
| Get with the times, grandpa. Thanks to the wonders of buy-
| now-pay-later services, we don't have to worry about that
| anymore, just stop thinking and consume!
| jfyi wrote:
| I largely get ads for things I already have bought.
| Otherwise, it's really general demographic stuff that
| doesn't strike a chord.
|
| I assume it's because I don't really browse for buyables
| unless I have the intent of buying something immediately.
| On a personal level, I fail entirely to understand the
| value proposition in web advertising.
| bonoboTP wrote:
| So that when you see all that stuff you can't afford on the
| neighbor/coworker or your friend's place, you can be
| envious, so their spending was worth it.
|
| Same with all those car and watch ads in magazines. It's
| not like regular people are constantly looking to buy a new
| car. But the brand must be etched into brains. Your
| neighbor must be reasonably convinced that people around
| him are on the same page regarding the prestige of a
| certain brand, else it's not worth spending on. So even if
| you can't afford whatever car model, the fact that you're
| aware that it's prestigious is already worth it.
|
| This is somewhat weaker in personalized online ads because
| your neighbor can't know what ads you saw. Billboards and
| super bowl ads a much better for establishing _common
| knowledge_ , but perhaps that's why influencer-based
| marketing is gaining ground. All followers know that all
| followers saw the embedded ad. Maybe they should introduce
| ads where it says "Your friend Joe Schmo watched the
| following ad:"
| soco wrote:
| Buying junk is so yesterday. Today the game is to feed you
| conspiracies and farm political support.
| okanat wrote:
| I wonder how much of this is actual advertising working
| (proven by independent A/B testing) and how much of it is big
| tech bullshitting their shareholders and customers. Even
| Veritasium had a video ~10 years ago, describing Facebook's
| way of reducing view counts to coerce advertisers to pay
| higher.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Monetization. If people aren't willing to pay for the products,
| these companies have figured out how to make the customers'
| data the product.
| hmmokidk wrote:
| This is a dumb take. They will make money every way they can.
| sudobash1 wrote:
| You can pay for Google services. But even if you pay for
| Google One or YouTube premium, I'm sure that Google will
| still track your behavior and mine your data. Why would a
| company not "double-dip"?
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Even better, by paying you prove that you have disposable
| income. You are a more attractive cow for advertisers to
| milk.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| My favorite example of this is the thoroughly craven _New
| York Times_ which puts content behind a paywall and loads
| it with awful ads aimed at people who've proven they are
| made of money.
|
| Contrast that certain TV dayparts saturated with subprime
| ads promoting Medicare scams and other offerings for
| people who can't spend their own money on things except
| for an occasional ad for a car dealer because if people
| weren't driving you'd have much less reason to call a
| personal injury lawyer.
|
| Ad free tiers for Netflix and whatnot have the problem
| that people who won't pay for ad free aren't really worth
| advertising to.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| > My favorite example of this is the thoroughly craven
| New York Times which puts content behind a paywall and
| loads it with awful ads aimed at people who've proven
| they are made of money.
|
| It's almost as if you don't remember the good old days
| when the NY Times sold you a physical newspaper...that
| was (and still is) stuffed with ads.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I do. And I remember exposes of the media business circa
| the 1970s that point out the synergistic relationship
| between subscriptions and ads, such as Ben Bagdikian
| pointing out that subscription revenue subsidized ads in
| daily papers or the fact that magazines like _Vogue_
| received much more revenue from advertising than
| subscriptions but wouldn 't be viable if they were free
| because paying for a subscription qualified you as a
| consumer.
|
| Lately the folks at my gas station have hit me up for a
| conversation whenever I was looking at newspapers,
| usually it is about how shocking it is how little paper
| you get in local papers for $2.50 or more. There are the
| funnies and the DBA listings and front-page articles
| about some chain store that isn't in our town going out
| of business. They don't bother to send reporters to
| public meetings like they did 25 years ago, and if there
| is a local election you might have to wait 36 hours after
| the results are posted by the board of elections. (Used
| to be a reason why I bought a paper)
|
| Contrast that to the N.Y. Times which costs $6 or so but
| is a beast in terms of size (small print too!) although
| I'd say a lot of the content is vacuous.
| GiorgioG wrote:
| You can choose not to use Google at all. Pay other
| companies like FastMail. Kagi for search, etc.
| LinXitoW wrote:
| You can pay not Google for services too. Most people don't,
| though. If ALL people that used free stuff (like gmail)
| suddenly started paying an appropriate amount to
| competitors, the problems may solve themselves. But people
| don't do that, because they're cheap or care more about
| their money than their data/privacy.
|
| Now, all this is of course an inevitable consequence of
| capitalism, but that's not a conversation anyone herre
| seems ready for.
| dockerd wrote:
| Most paid streaming services now started showing ads because
| they are looking for more revenue and profit.
| CalChris wrote:
| We are paying for phones but we are still the product. Google
| Facebook etc were explicitly created to monetize privacy.
| What I search for is monetized. Who I know is monetized.
| Private companies will monetize what we perceive as public
| goods to our detriment.
| callmeal wrote:
| > If people aren't willing to pay for the products, these
| companies have figured out how to make the customers' data
| the product.
|
| This happens even when people _pay_ for the products. See for
| instance the enshittification of streaming "ad free"
| services.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| What exactly is being monitored? It looks like this enabled
| Gemini to send a message via Whatsapp if you ask it to.
|
| Maybe the problem is what you consider a privacy violation,
| other users consider a feature.
| shortn wrote:
| RTFA.
|
| Don't act like your opinion is the only one that matters. You
| may not, but other people do care about their privacy.
|
| "Here's the thing: Google promises that under normal
| circumstances, Gemini cannot read or summarize your WhatsApp
| messages. But, and this is a big but, with the "help" of the
| Google Assistant or the Utilities app, it may view your
| messages (including images), read and respond to your
| WhatsApp notifications, and more."
|
| Doesn't matter what your opinion is on privacy, google
| doesn't give you the option to opt out. - "regardless of
| whether your Gemini Apps Activity is on or off."
| jeroenhd wrote:
| The article claims Gemini can read your messages but Google
| denies that. From Google's own documentation:
|
| > What Gemini can't do with WhatsApp
|
| > Read or summarize your messages
|
| > Add or read images, gifs, or memes in your messages
|
| > Add or play audio or videos in your messages
|
| > Read or respond to WhatsApp notifications
|
| Of course, it's possible neowin says Google is lying, but
| they'll need to come up with something better than "maybe
| something may happen in the future" if they're going to
| make these claims.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| It seems like OP (bix6) is the one who needs to be lectured
| that their opinion isn't the only one that matters, not me.
| My point is that different people have different opinions.
| Just because someone thinks an app violates their privacy
| doesn't mean they get to unilaterally decide the app
| shouldn't exist.
|
| If someone is concerned with their privacy by this feature,
| then they can just not use it. If someone is concerned that
| someone else might use this feature on private
| communications they had with the user, then that person
| misunderstands privacy and needs to realize that once they
| communicate their remarks to some other party, their
| ability to control their privacy to their own standards
| goes out the window generally, and not just with AI apps.
| VohuMana wrote:
| I think if I understand the article correctly it sounds like
| Google might also be reading the messages so it can respond
| for you. Regardless I think the other thing people might not
| be happy about is Gemini can still interact with apps
| regardless of if you have app activity turned on or off, as
| quoted from the linked email in the article: What's changing
| Gemini will soon be able to help you use Phone, Messages,
| WhatsApp, and Utilities on your phone, whether your Gemini
| Apps Activity is on or off
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Google's own documentation explicitly states it cannot read
| your messages or notifications. You can ask it to compose a
| message for you or start a call, though.
| bee_rider wrote:
| One problem with this sort of thing is that--sure, we can
| call privacy violation an opinion and admit that some people
| have dumb opinions like "I don't need any privacy." But
| unfortunately only one person needs to let the privacy
| violation bot into the conversation to violate everybody's
| privacy, so it isn't as if your opinion will really be
| respected.
|
| Of course, the easy solution is that nobody has conversations
| that might need privacy anymore; people can just always be in
| public persona mode. Hopefully we don't end up with a society
| made up of inauthentic lonely people as a result.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| simple solution: don't have a digital life
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| As someone without a digital life, Simple [?] Easy.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I find it pretty easy. I don't have WhatsApp, Instagram,
| Facebook, LinkIn, or anything else really besides a few
| forum memberships like the one here.
| bix6 wrote:
| Your ISP and device manufacturers are still tracking you
| though?
| fsflover wrote:
| My phone's manufacturer doesn't track me. Sent from my
| Librem 5. Also I use Tor.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| my telecom pinging my device (Sonim flip phone) location
| is quite different than my personality and political
| views being widely scrapeable.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Because people collectively vote for the ad model over the
| subscription model.
| xandrius wrote:
| Are those the only options?
|
| How about paying once, owning a specific version and that's
| it?
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Not great for a chat app, which needs ongoing active
| servers and someone to fix stuff that breaks, even if you
| feature-freeze it.
| jjani wrote:
| Pretty great for a chat app used by a few billion people,
| a few $billion is enough to keep things running for many
| decades. e.g. banks do exactly this, with much more
| critical and complicated infra.
| xur17 wrote:
| How do banks do this?
| phalangion wrote:
| That works for software, but not as well for services like
| YouTube
| dilyevsky wrote:
| Even for software practice has shown few are actually
| willing to pay hundreds to thousands for a lifetime
| license. And you still need to purchase service packs,
| etc
| leptons wrote:
| Were we even given a choice? In most cases, no.
| 93po wrote:
| people didn't vote for shit, if they could vote they'd vote
| for no ads _and_ no cost. companies like google destroyed
| this option on purpose. there is no reason why the vast
| majority of apps and services online can 't be both free and
| ad free. if i look for tetris on the app store it's literally
| impossible to find a version that's both ad free and free of
| purchases despite the fact that i know there's at minimum 100
| options that fit this criteria. google/apple just buries them
| and deliberately doesnt allow filtering to find them
| thfuran wrote:
| >there is no reason why the vast majority of apps and
| services online can't be both free and ad free
|
| You can give away software, but running a service costs
| money. P2p messaging can be free (and signal exists), but
| nothing like free and adless YouTube or Facebook is going
| to happen regardless whether google or meta do anything to
| prevent it.
| jjani wrote:
| The Saudis would love to have a platform as popular as
| YouTube for their image washing purposes, no matter if it
| costs them a cool $billion or two per year to keep it ad-
| free. They don't do it because they'd rather not
| antagonize Google, a company wielding global power,
| otherwise they'd love to.
| 93po wrote:
| there are tons of free mastadon servers that cost nothing
| to end users and perfectly capture the functionality of
| twitter/facebook/whatever. yes there is root cost at its
| core, but its distributed across people who volunteer to
| pay for it on smaller scales becasue they enjoy running
| those services.
|
| agreed its trickier when its gets to stuff like youtube,
| but piracy being free and widely spread is an example of
| how its possible, just not well developed right now
|
| there's also options where it's pay-as-you-go with stuff
| like bitcoin (e.g. i pay $0.01 to watch a video) where
| it's effectively free but on large scale does cover the
| costs of infra
| 9dev wrote:
| As much as I despise ads, this is a pretty delusional
| take. Mastodon was only possible because of the hard work
| of open source contributors _with day jobs that feed
| them_. Running and accessing these instances requires all
| sorts of costly infrastructure that doesn't materialise
| out of the blue. And finally, there may be a handful of
| geeks that enjoy paying for hosting, but that only works
| as long as it's a niche community. Introduce 2 billion
| users, and it becomes just plain impossible.
|
| And as you cite piracy as an alternative: that's not
| "free" as in software, that's "free" as in freeloading.
| Someone else is paying for it, just not you. That might
| work to fulfil your own needs, but it's not a viable
| solution for business models.
| LinXitoW wrote:
| I have no idea how in the world you think that could ever
| work in a general sense.
|
| Things require labor. Labor costs money. Ergo, people
| giving you stuff require money, somehow. A tetris clone
| requires so little labour, that a well-off person with too
| much time (ergo labor) on their hands can give you that for
| free, but that's not scalable for 99% of important stuff.
|
| Because capitalism, they also require more money, YoY, than
| last year, meaning they can't just make a steady stream of
| profit. They need more profit every year.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| As we have all learned, ad and subscription models aren't
| mutually exclusive. You can still get ads while paying for a
| subscription.
|
| In fact, I don't believe the ad model would have gone away if
| everyone started paying for a subscription. The bottom tier
| would still be filled with ads.
|
| Ideally, the market would solve this. The companies that are
| pushing annoying would lose customers to the companies that
| don't. But since we don't live in a ideal world, I honestly
| think regulations would be the only way. Something like "If a
| customer pays for subscription in any way, you can't show
| ads" - and then let the companies put a realistic price to
| their subscription tiers, which makes it worthwhile for them.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Ad subsidized subscriptions are cheaper.
|
| I don't see what people find so grating about having a ad-
| load/cost spectrum. Maybe it's just confusion about the
| billing model.
| 9dev wrote:
| They are cheaper until they aren't. The neat thing about
| a plan that removes all ads is that you can just add the
| ads again later and introduce yet another, even more
| expensive plan that removes the ads again. Such fun! Much
| profit!
| dakiol wrote:
| I pay for 2 streaming services. They include annoying ads and
| the only way to avoid ads is, yeah to _just_ pay more. No
| sense at all.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| That makes perfect sense actually, you pay them half of the
| ad revenue to get rid of half the ads.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's totally possible to have the ad model without all the
| spying. It's just that marketers don't want that to be an
| option. They're all in on spying on us.
| IAmBroom wrote:
| Yes, it's possible for marketers to act contrary to their
| own interests. Is that really your point?
| Macha wrote:
| As smart TVs, cable TV and streaming services show, even
| things that people generally pay for will get the ad model
| given enough time.
| fransje26 wrote:
| > Because people collectively vote for the ad model over the
| subscription model
|
| You make it sound as if those were the only two options
| available..
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Right, I left out the donation model because less than 1%
| of users ever actually donate anything. It's hardly worth
| even considering for vast majority of businesses.
| portugalportuga wrote:
| money
| sneak wrote:
| WhatsApp is surveillanceware from a surveillance company.
|
| Anyone running into this problem willingly opted in to having
| surveillance software on their device. Meta's track record is
| not secret.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It's become so terrible that I've given up on trying to secure
| Android anymore because it's become essentially impossible.
| This is the primary reason why my current smartphone is my last
| smartphone.
| Liftyee wrote:
| Things like these make me glad to have a Xiaomi phone with their
| minimal implementation of Google instead of a full on Android
| phone. I get to avoid this stuff being pushed on me, and I don't
| use any of the Xiaomi "AI" stuff (which wouldn't support foreign
| apps anyway).
|
| Granted, my data is definitely being sent to Xiaomi analytics,
| fixed by NextDNS. Re: governmental influence, I'd prefer Chinese
| to US (then again, that is my ethnicity bias). Recent events make
| the two governments look more similar than ever.
| nabla9 wrote:
| Learn how to disable Gemini AI on Android
| https://tuta.com/blog/how-to-disable-gemini-on-android
| hueho wrote:
| Don't even know what the product is about, but it went into my
| shitlist for redirecting me always to a badly machine-
| translated page, not understanding en-us as a language code in
| the URL, and not having a language selector.
| cesarb wrote:
| The whole situation is still clear as mud to me. What if I don't
| have the Gemini app installed, how do I get to its configuration
| screen? Is the component which exfiltrates the data part of the
| Gemini app, or is it a separate Android component which also has
| to be removed? What if I didn't receive that email?
| Macha wrote:
| > What if I don't have the Gemini app installed, how do I get
| to its configuration screen?
|
| You can search "Gemini" in your settings app.
| cesarb wrote:
| > You can search "Gemini" in your settings app.
|
| Thanks, but that only leads to a screen asking whether I want
| to enable Gemini. I decline, and it goes back to the previous
| screen, without opening any settings form.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Since I always answered "Not now" when my phone wanted to
| replace Google Assistant with Gemini, I still have Google
| Assistant on my phone. When I try to bring up Gemini
| settings, it will ask me if I want to replace Google
| Assistant with Gemini, and not give me access to any Gemini-
| related settings.
| paxys wrote:
| Gemini being able to read WhatsApp messages ( _when explicitly
| asked_ ) and take actions can be convenient. If it does so
| without prompting or feeds the data back into their model in any
| way for training - that's a big no.
| lucb1e wrote:
| It's apparently obvious to you that "hey Gemini, can you
| message Mike that I love him?" means the text is first sent to
| Google and then back to your phone and then by your phone to
| Mike. This isn't the case for everyone, perhaps also because
| it's not necessarily that way:
| https://www.macworld.com/article/678307/how-to-use-siri-offl...
| I couldn't find whether tasks related to "reading your
| messages" (like text to speech while you're driving or so) is a
| thing Siri does, but it obviously talks to you and if you tell
| it to send a message then that works offline so evidently there
| is some access there without needing to first upload it to the
| assistant's vendor
| inerte wrote:
| There's a lot of business happening on WhatsApp. I don't think
| Google cares that much about the messages I sent to my family
| (although it helps with profiling and ad targetting) but I bet
| the real money is understanding what people are buying and how
| they do commerce in WhatsApp.
| gowld wrote:
| If you connect Gemini to Assistant, and connect Assistant to
| Whatsapp, then you have connected Gemini to Whatsapp.
|
| https://support.google.com/assistant/answer/9984245?hl=en
|
| Documentation is unclear, but it appears Gemini is always
| connected to Utilities, and Utilities is always connected to
| Whatsapp, and the data flow between these apps is not documented.
| okokwhatever wrote:
| Choose your own adventure:
|
| 1. Security > Privacy > Convenience 2. Security > Convenience >
| Privacy 3. Privacy > Security > Convenience 4. Privacy >
| Convenience > Security 5. Convenience > Security > Privacy 6.
| Convenience > Privacy > Security
| fsflover wrote:
| > Privacy > Security
|
| There's no privacy without security.
| baobun wrote:
| More precisely, confidentiality is one dimension of
| information security. It doesnt make sense to put them
| against each other.
| msgodel wrote:
| There is no such thing as privacy on a non-free OS and especially
| on a non-free OS with a closed app store.
|
| We told you this would happen.
| Oras wrote:
| I wonder what meta will do, they recently introduced meta ai
| inside WhatsApp (even though I didn't enable it, or asked for
| it), it's just floating there.
|
| With Gemini having access, those who are happy to give AI access
| to their apps would surely prefer Gemini as it will be phone wide
| instead of meta ai which only runs inside WhatsApp.
| skybrian wrote:
| Do people use Gemini on their phones? Does it do anything if
| you're not using it?
| iamleppert wrote:
| I don't see what the problem is. If the User doesn't want Gemini
| to read his or her messages, the User doesn't have to partake in
| the sending of the messages. Simple! A User agrees to be bound by
| the ToS (Terms of Service) in having they do take to receive the
| user agreement as bound in law by Google. The User doesn't need
| to understand or have the right to contest the agreement or the
| use of any data created by a User, as the User can simply not use
| the product or service as governed by the same Google ToS.
| Simple!
| bundie wrote:
| So simple. :-)
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Google has been working on this since November last year going by
| the wayback archive of the support page for this feature.
|
| I'm not seeing any indication that Gemini can read your messages,
| though. You can compose messages and start calls, but I can't get
| it to read me any of my messages. In fact, I can't even get it to
| send messages to group chats, only to individual contacts.
|
| The feature makes a lot of sense, of course. WhatsApp is to many
| countries across the globe what texting and calling is to
| Americans. If your smart assistant can't even interact with
| WhatsApp, it's basically useless for many people.
|
| Edit: ah, that explains why I can't make Gemini read my messages
| to me, Google's own documentation
| (https://support.google.com/gemini/answer/15574928) says it
| can't: What Gemini can't do with WhatsApp
| Read or summarize your messages Add or read images,
| gifs, or memes in your messages Add or play audio or
| videos in your messages Read or respond to WhatsApp
| notifications
|
| If you connected Google Assistant to WhatsApp, it seems like data
| may flow that direction, but then you've already hooked WhatsApp
| into Google before so I don't think anyone will be surprised
| there.
|
| Does anyone know how I can make Gemini read messages? I can't
| even find the assistant settings necessary for that stuff to
| function.
| Hizonner wrote:
| What Gemini _should_ be able to do with WhatsApp:
| Exactly and only what any other random app on the phone could
| do with WhatsApp, assuming that you have enabled that
| in exactly the way you would have to enable any other
| random app to do it.
|
| Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source of
| the OS to give its software special privilege to reach inside
| of third-party apps.
| kccqzy wrote:
| The line is blurry. Google is positioning Gemini not just as
| an app, but as a OS level feature. The OS can by definition
| reach into any third-app app to do anything it wants. I'll
| give some more examples of OS-level features in case it's not
| clear: copy/paste is an OS-level feature and it is designed
| to extract arbitrary text or content from third party apps
| (copy) and insert them into third party apps (paste);
| screenshotting is an OS-level feature and it is designed to
| capture the visible views of any third party app with the
| only exception being DRM content.
|
| Apple Intelligence has similar marketing. In last year's
| WWDC, there was the whole "Siri, when is my mom's flight
| landing?" segment (see
| https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2024/101/ at
| 1h22m) that didn't generate any controversy. So for some
| reason people think Siri should rightfully be an OS-level
| feature but Gemini should not. Got it. I guess Apple's PR is
| just that much better than Google's.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| This is the line of thinking that got Microsoft into
| trouble back in the day, and they were forced to split the
| web browser and the operating system.
|
| However, operating system technology has come a long way
| since - the trick is to control not only the _computer_ but
| the _government_.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Dear god! Are you sure? If I ever sensed a forkable event
| for Android...
| Hizonner wrote:
| Well, really the line was crossed when Google Play
| Services got special privileges (and third party app
| developers were encouraged to call on Google Play
| Services as the only practical way to do various things,
| some of which maybe _should_ have been part of the OS).
| And the "assistant" crap, and whatever else.
|
| ... and GraphenOS isn't exactly a _fork_ , but it's
| plugging away, fighting the good fight, doing things like
| making Google Play Services both optional and a lot less
| privileged on the phone than it thinks it is.
| overfeed wrote:
| Devils advocate: Google Play Services was the right
| solution to all the clamoring about Android fragmentation
| and OEMs abandoning devices by not providing upgrades.
| kccqzy wrote:
| I agree that Google Play Services was the right solution
| to fragmentation. I also agree that having forks like
| GrapheneOS was the right solution for a subset of people
| who like to de-Google themselves.
| myko wrote:
| Definitely helped with that and also absolutely
| frustrating that it is so abusable to keep folks out of
| the Android garden.
|
| Undeniable that Android updates are so much better than
| in the past, and it's far easier to keep your Android app
| using modern APIs than your iOS app, because most of
| those APIs are libraries with full backwards
| compatibility going back many years.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Yes, but GrapheneOS has lost access to Pixel specific
| drivers/etc, with the repo changes Google made?
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44256604
| Hizonner wrote:
| The fact that Google would find it to be convenient for the
| line to be blurry doesn't mean that anybody looking at it
| _in good faith_ sees the line as blurry.
| kccqzy wrote:
| But _some_ people in good faith can see the line as
| blurry. Others perhaps not. It 's subjective and opinion-
| based.
|
| HN people just like to live in their own bubble thinking
| no other opinion is valid other than their own.
| sheepscreek wrote:
| Google is an advertising company. Apple is a consumer
| hardware company. Who would you trust more with your
| data? It's that simple (irrespective of the ground truth,
| simply referring to the optics of it).
| ajross wrote:
| Google sells hardware and Apple sells ads, in great
| quantity in both cases. Not sure "it's that simple" at
| all.
| dasil003 wrote:
| What percentage of revenue do ads and hardware contribute
| to the bottom line in Apple and Google? That answer will
| tell you more about leadership incentives than just hand-
| waving away the discussion based on the fact that big
| tech companies tend to dip their toes in a lot of pools.
| fsflover wrote:
| It's expanding, which is all that matters:
| https://www.macrumors.com/2024/11/19/apple-now-directly-
| sell...
| ogurechny wrote:
| All of you have joined an argument that is completely
| fictional. I am amazed that someone can still fall for
| "Apple is a hardware company" bait.
|
| Both Google and Apple control enormous number of devices,
| the data on them (or data collected by them), their
| software, and their users. They make money by selling you
| tiny bit of access to that, directly or indirectly. End
| of story. Should I remind you how much being special to
| privacy restrictions costs Facebook?
| potatoproduct wrote:
| Apple is an advertising company.
|
| https://ads.apple.com/
|
| Generates billions for Apple and is growing rapidly,
| since they implemented increasingly aggressive "privacy
| features" to block their competitors.
| pdpi wrote:
| Apple has an advertising business. That's materially
| different from having advertising as your core revenue
| stream.
|
| Likewise, Google has a consumer electronics business, but
| they're not a consumer electronics company.
| pc86 wrote:
| The fact that someone disagrees with you doesn't mean
| they're operating in bad faith.
| transcriptase wrote:
| It does when it that person is taking a charitable view
| of anything Google has done since about 2011.
| michaelt wrote:
| At first I thought the fact the advertising-and-tracking
| company needed access to their competitor's encrypted
| messenger was related to the tracking that is their core
| business model.
|
| But it's unfair to assume bad faith like that.
|
| Perhaps they merely need access to the encrypted messages
| in order to provide a better user experience, by serving
| more relevant and better personalised adverts?
| jchw wrote:
| I'm not going to argue there's any bar too low for Google
| to not clear, but also, it really _is_ possible that it
| 's just for the stupid AI feature they say it is. Just
| because it's something Google could feasibly do doesn't
| mean they will. I'm very confident they have never used
| Google Public DNS for advertising or tracking.
|
| It's one thing to treat funneling data "to the cloud"
| with suspicion _out of principle_ , but personally I
| think it's counterproductive to go a step further and
| just assume everything is always being maximally abused.
| The fact that it _could_ be is an issue, but that doesn
| 't mean it is.
| jajko wrote:
| Its blurry because it was made blurry. It shouldn't be, and
| any laziness-inducing helper app or product ain't no
| excuse.
|
| These are basic core (and so far immovable) privacy
| principles, lets not lose sight of this when we delve into
| whataboutism.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > Google is positioning Gemini not just as an app, but as a
| OS level feature
|
| Eeewww.
|
| We need a mobile OS competitor.
|
| I am seriously considering a move to Fairphone with /e/os.
|
| GrapheneOS would be a possibility, but I don't trust Google
| to make decent hardware, so not super excited to get a
| Pixel phone.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| I definitely had to tweak the settings a lot for the
| battery to not get warm on my Pixel. But after a week I
| managed and battery life is better than with comparable
| phones since the background bloat isn't there on
| Graphene.
|
| So far there was a solution for everything, I don't do
| online banking on the phone though.
|
| I wonder if LineageOS might solve this problem already
| though, /e/os probably would as well
| baobun wrote:
| > I definitely had to tweak the settings a lot for the
| battery to not get warm on my Pixel. But after a week I
| managed and battery life is better than with comparable
| phones since the background bloat isn't there on
| Graphene.
|
| I am sure a detailed writeup will be very appreciated if
| you bother and manage.
| fsflover wrote:
| > We need a mobile OS competitor.
|
| Mobian, PureOS, postmarketOS exist.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Yes, I have an older phone running LineageOS for that
| matter.
|
| But those are typically community efforts, so software
| support is not certain. It sucks when so many things just
| expect you to have a working cell phone.
| gessha wrote:
| What company will jump in the competition meat grinder
| between Google and Apple. Maybe if it's state-sponsored.
| I don't know how much HarmonyOS/Huawei are state-
| sponsored so I can't claim there are.
| fsflover wrote:
| > What company will jump in the competition meat grinder
| between Google and Apple
|
| Purism did. My Librem 5 works remarkably well given how
| small the company is.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| How do you deal with things such as mobile banking? So
| many services just presume you use either an Android or
| IOS.
|
| At some point I thought I really needed Android Auto, but
| I can probably just get a MStick only for that. There are
| other things that keep me jailed to Android though.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| Punkt has a phonen using a fork of grapheneos out of
| switzerland with some cloud services like VPN attached to
| make it a completely degoogled 'secure phone', called
| ApostrophyOS
|
| https://mc02.punkt.ch/en/mc02-5g-secure-phone/
|
| https://www.apostrophy.ch/
|
| Can't vouche for it, I just use a flip phone.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Google is positioning Gemini not just as an app, but as a
| OS level feature.
|
| That doesn't make it any better or more acceptable. If
| anything, it makes it much, much worse. I absolutely don't
| want any LLM to have OS level access to my data, period.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Making OS level features depend on an external cloud
| service is a rather dubious proposition in general. It
| feels a bit anti-competitive to me, if nothing else.
| jacquesm wrote:
| The line is not blurry at all. The line is what I define
| the line to be on the devices that I've paid for.
| Someone wrote:
| > The line is blurry. Google is positioning Gemini not just
| as an app, but as a OS level feature
|
| The line _is_ blurry, but Microsoft was positioning
| Internet Explorer as an OS level feature, too.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Co
| r...:
|
| _"Microsoft argued that the merging of Windows and IE was
| the result of innovation and competition, that the two were
| now the same product and inextricably linked, and that
| consumers were receiving the benefits of IE for free."_
|
| Apple somewhat similarly argued that the iOS App Store is
| an OS level feature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Gam
| es_v._Apple#Background:
|
| _"Apple has further argued that it requires iOS apps to
| use its storefront to "ensure that iOS apps meet Apple's
| high standards for privacy, security, content, and quality"
| and avoid exposing iOS users to risks from alternative
| storefronts."_
|
| In both cases justice departments (the ones who draw those
| lines) disagreed with those claims.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Unfortunately the situation on Android is that other apps
| cannot do anything with WhatsApp, and there's fuck all you
| can do about it as a user.
|
| I shouldn't _need_ Google special-casing Gemini to allow LLMs
| to interact with my messages. I should be able to wire up
| Tasker to WhatsApp on one end, and to OpenAI or Anthropic
| models of my choice via API calls on the other end. Alas,
| Android is basically like iPhone now, just with more faux
| choice of vendors and less quality control.
| sfn42 wrote:
| If you give users a way to compromise their own security,
| scammers will find a way to make users compromise
| themselves.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Users always have a way to compromise their own security,
| and short of taking away their freedom completely (e.g.
| putting them in a mental hospital) that's not possible to
| fix.
|
| Sacrificing human freedom in the name of security is a
| long, dark, and well-trodden path that I don't think we
| ought to venture down any further.
| dineol wrote:
| "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a
| little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor
| Safety"
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| > Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source
| of the OS to give its software special privilege to reach
| inside of third-party apps
|
| Gemini uses the same APIs and permissions as any other
| Android app.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| This is trivial to verify. Just look at the permissions
| requested by the Google app like I did.
| windexh8er wrote:
| Even given all of the historical abuses of Google on
| Android you still believe an app permission is acting in
| good faith when Google has hooks elsewhere into the OS?
|
| Google has already been successfully sued this year in CA
| for siphoning off data from phones that are idle and the
| remainder of states is in process [0].
|
| [0] https://www.androidauthority.com/google-314-million-
| verdict-...
| pxc wrote:
| > Google needs to not be abusing its position as the source
| of the OS to give its software special privilege to reach
| inside of third-party apps.
|
| There are some extremely useful features that you can
| implement with AI, but currently only at the OS level, not
| with normal app permissions-- namely live translation of
| audio streams that belong to another app (calls, video
| playback, etc.).
|
| But I suppose you're still right; it would still be better if
| Android had an API for sharing app audio streams like this.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Siri does this, but the processing happens on-device so it
| stays private. Seems like a nice compromise.
|
| Google has Gemma? So they could also blow Apple out of the
| water by competing directly there.
| amelius wrote:
| I'd be more interested to know what would happen to Google if
| it turned out they were reading all of our WhatsApp messages.
|
| If that's a slap on the wrist, then we can be sure that
| Google is doing it.
| eddythompson80 wrote:
| > The Gemini mobile app may support some of these actions with
| help from Google Assistant or the Utilities app, even with
| WhatsApp disabled in Gemini. Learn more about Google Assistant
| features in your Gemini mobile app and actions supported by the
| Utilities app.
| kccqzy wrote:
| > What Gemini can't do with WhatsApp > Read or summarize your
| messages
|
| Current HN title: Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
|
| Even aside from the false equivalence of Google and Gemini, the
| current HN title is pure clickbait.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| "Google's own documentation"... uh oh, first time?!
|
| The first archived version of this page containing the "can't
| do" list was published Nov 2024. The email is about a change
| "making it easier" to be rolled out July 2025 so I would not
| bet someone else's money on this page being up to date. We'll
| find out I guess.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20241107174006/https://support.g...
|
| My normal "Google's own documentation" experience is the other
| way round - to be told something is possible when it certainly
| isn't.
| yard2010 wrote:
| It can't read your messages just as tech giants can't pirate
| every book in the world to train their models.
|
| Crooked billionaires shouldn't enjoy the benefit of the doubt.
| pier25 wrote:
| AI has really accelerated enshitification
| Mistletoe wrote:
| In the year 2025 I can't think of any reason a person would use
| Signal instead of WhatsApp. All your friends and family should
| move to Signal if that is your excuse.
| ectospheno wrote:
| It was fairly easy to move people I talk with to signal. I
| stopped responding to anything else. I don't miss the few
| people who didn't adjust.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Mostly for QoL and polish, which WhatsApp has the upper hand
| in. Perhaps most notably, WhatsApp treats desktop as a first-
| tier platform instead of as an afterthought, which makes its
| desktop app considerably nicer.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| > In the year 2025 I can't think of any reason a person would
| use Signal instead of WhatsApp.
|
| I can. Several, actuallly
|
| > All your friends and family should move to Signal if that is
| your excuse.
|
| They did. Those that didn't/won't, do have my telephone number,
| though.
| sega_sai wrote:
| The whole situation with Gemini Apps Activity setting is so
| frustrating. Even if I pay for Gemini Pro, the only way to make
| sure there will be no human looking at your chats is to set Apps
| Activity to off, which means you don't have _any_ history for
| Gemini chats, even for the messages from a minute ago.
| bionhoward wrote:
| It's absurdly dumb, agreed
| Barbing wrote:
| Reminiscent of their heavy handed approach to disabling watch
| history on YouTube, even when paying for YouTube Premium.
|
| (Google punishes viewers who make themselves less valuable to
| advertisers by giving them an entirely blank homepage.)
| kccqzy wrote:
| It's not a punishment; it's entirely transactional. You make
| yourself less valuable to advertisers so you also make
| yourself less valuable to Google. Therefore Google provides
| you with fewer features such as a blank homepage.
|
| The era of Google providing costly features to users with no
| benefit to itself is coming to an end.
| T4iga wrote:
| Except you missed that part where they said > Premium
|
| If you pay for it, you can expect to not be the product.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think that ship sailed a few years ago. It's better for
| big tech if you pay _and_ be the product so they went
| ahead and did that.
| jjani wrote:
| That's a gift, the opposite of a punishment.
| samrus wrote:
| That was a blessing in disguise though. Its way easier for me
| to not binge youtube now
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Wouldn't a blank homepage be exactly what you expect if you
| had no tracking enabled? The algorithm that generates the
| homepage is probably totally stunted with only empty logs to
| draw on.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| You could make a list of demographic fitted choices based
| on info on the user.
|
| One wonders if you couldn't whip up something that would
| whip up a list of choices by operating locally only on the
| users history returning just a list of things to show on
| the page and forgetting it when the user closed the tab.
| Macha wrote:
| Honestly having occasionally glimpsed the logged out
| YouTube page which appears to do this... I'm glad that I
| don't have to deal with that either.
|
| As for what they should do, I think populating the
| homepage from the subscriptions list (either literally as
| an ordered list or by some algorithmic "watch time vs
| average watch time for this creator", I don't care) would
| be preferable.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > operating locally only on the users history
|
| Most users won't understand how that works. As far as
| they're concerned "youtube watches what I do", and any
| explanations about how the algorithm runs locally but
| google can still see what you watch if they look at IP
| logs will be far beyond a typical users desire to
| understand.
| pretext-1 wrote:
| Another option although it requires using another account is
| using Gemini for Google Workspace.
| sega_sai wrote:
| Thanks for the suggestion! I actually see that Business
| Standard Google Workspace (for 1 user) that includes Gemini
| Access costs less than Gemini Pro subscription for an
| individual. I will give it a go.
| thimabi wrote:
| But note that Gemini via Workspace doesn't have all the
| features of Gemini Pro, and it is notoriously behind
| regular Gemini in terms of feature adoption. So far,
| there's no access to Gemini CLI (paid separately) and no
| way to selectively delete chats, for instance.
| Macha wrote:
| Apparently, my personal account being a gsuite account is to my
| benefit this time as "your administrator has not enabled access
| to Gemini for your account".
| 7373737373 wrote:
| I hope the EU sues the shit/existence out of them for
| exfiltrating private conversations and violating the secrecy of
| correspondence without explicit consent
|
| Tech corporations and their managers are basically data rapists
| vaylian wrote:
| > for exfiltrating private conversations and violating the
| secrecy of correspondence without explicit consent
|
| I have bad news for you: https://www.patrick-
| breyer.de/en/posts/messaging-and-chat-co...
|
| The EU wants to exfiltrate chats as well.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| That is very bad. The EU is very much not a monolith though,
| and both things could happen at once.
| beagle3 wrote:
| WhatsApp backup on your Google account contains all your message
| history, and is unencrypted. If you use google cloud backup for
| your phone, Google can read your WhatsApp messages, and has been
| able to do so for more than 5 years now.
| jadamson wrote:
| There's an option to enable end-to-end encryption on your
| backups.
|
| https://faq.whatsapp.com/490592613091019
| beagle3 wrote:
| Nice. It wasn't there last time I checked.
|
| I wonder what percentage of WhatsApp users backup to Google
| cloud, and what percentage of those use encryption.
| nicce wrote:
| More surprising is that people think this is the first time - be
| default your WhatsApp backups are unencrypted by default so they
| have had the access for long time for large part of the userbase.
| Also primary reason why WhatsApp hasn't been a problem for law
| enforcements.
| hbn wrote:
| People have been clowning on Apple for being behind on the AI
| stuff and -- while I'd never defend how they promised a bunch of
| features in 2024, showed them in ads, and sold iPhones based on
| vaporware, but still haven't shipped most of the features -- I
| will say, I imagine a lot of the hold-up is because they realized
| how dangerous it is to start trusting AI with the sensitive data
| on your phone. It's probably not too hard to make it work most of
| the time, but even if there's a 0.0001% chance the AI will send a
| sensitive image meant for your wife to your boss, you should
| probably reconsider shipping.
|
| I don't believe Google has the tact to care as long as they look
| like a market competitor in something.
| bapak wrote:
| > even if there's a 0.0001% chance the AI will send a sensitive
| image meant for your wife to your boss, you should probably
| reconsider shipping.
|
| Not the best example since Siri has been misunderstanding us
| for many, many years.
|
| You really meant to send that I love you to Louis coworker,
| right? Not to "Love"? Too late
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| > You really meant to send that I love you to Louis coworker,
| right? Not to "Love"? Too late
|
| Why make up stuff like this? Siri confirms everything that
| sends data.
| kstrauser wrote:
| That's not quite true, especially if you're using something
| like CarPlay. I have personally had this interaction:
|
| Me: Hey Siri, text Jen [my wife] I love you.
|
| Siri: OK, texting Johnny Chan [my ex-boss] I love you.
|
| Me: What NO!
|
| Johnny: Uh...
|
| That happened. It's not something I read about or made up.
| It went pretty much exactly like that.
| averageRoyalty wrote:
| This is a setting under Settings > Siri & Search >
| Automatically send messages.
|
| It's disabled by default, but it's possible you turned it
| on by accident or got a bad default setting I suppose.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > but even if there's a 0.0001% chance the AI will send a
| sensitive image meant for your wife to your boss, you should
| probably reconsider shipping.
|
| That's too low of a probability for Apple to care. The
| probability that YOU would do it yourself by some random series
| of accidents is probably orders of magnitude higher than that.
|
| Do you really think you're going to send 1,000,000 nudes to
| your wife without accidentally sending one to the wrong
| person!?
| HPsquared wrote:
| There's a "sensational news story" multiplier.
| II2II wrote:
| It's the other way around. The probability is so low that it
| is incredibly unlikely to happen to any given individual. You
| would have to be paranoid to worry about it. On the other
| hand the probability is so high that, when considering the
| size of Apple's user base, such incidents would happen
| regularly.
| thfuran wrote:
| They mean that the baseline probability of someone manually
| doing that to themselves without AI is higher than that.
| mynameisash wrote:
| > Do you really think you're going to send 1,000,000 nudes to
| your wife without accidentally sending one to the wrong
| person!?
|
| That seems like the wrong way to spin this hypothetical
| probability.
|
| A quick search says there are 1.38B iPhone users worldwide.
| According to[0], 87.8% of 18+ year olds have sexted, so let's
| estimate that to mean 1.21B users. Even if we assume users
| only ever send one nude, that means 1,210 gaffes if you
| assume one in a million.
|
| [0] https://www.womens-health.com/sexting-statistics
| kccqzy wrote:
| No. It's well documented and reported that Apple's hold-up is
| because of technical incompetency.
| mrfox321 wrote:
| I know right?
|
| They have always been behind. Why would this time be any
| different?
| Henchman21 wrote:
| I've not read this; do you have any links?
| frankdenbow wrote:
| https://www.cultofmac.com/news/former-apple-engineer-
| explain...
| 9dev wrote:
| That doesn't provide any nontrivial insights--yes, Siri
| is built on keyword detection, but it's also much older.
| But why are they having such a hard time creating an LLM-
| based Siri 2.0? Still no clue.
| dlivingston wrote:
| Very well known.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-
| intelligence/a...
|
| https://youtu.be/elfCDnMx3Ug?si=lP9OpeU9rpO2RIla
| standardUser wrote:
| Behind on AI? Apple was the _first_ to intercept personal
| communications and create inappropriate synopses of breakup
| texts for its users.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| I for one am glad they did this for the humor alone.
| xeonmc wrote:
| I can't help but wonder what "Thoughts on AI" would say if
| Steve were still here.
| pyman wrote:
| Steve Jobs predicted LLMs in 1985. He was 40 years ahead of
| everyone else.
|
| _(Search: Steve Jobs predicted the future of AI)_
| Oarch wrote:
| Why wonder? We can use AI to generate what he might have
| said! /s
| surgical_fire wrote:
| > -- I will say, I imagine a lot of the hold-up is because they
| realized how dangerous it is to start trusting AI with the
| sensitive data on your phone.
|
| It was probably Apple being incompetent with their AI approach
| rather than being careful
| bitpush wrote:
| Precisely. Its incredible that people think Apple is playing
| 4D chess with AI, when in reality the simplest answer is the
| most plausible - Apple has no clue wth to do with AI. Their
| own assistant - Siri - has been in shambles for close to a
| decade.
|
| Structurally Apple is in a disadvantage, in the AI race. And
| no amount of waiting, or polish is going to help them -
| unless they partner with OpenAI, Anthropic or Google.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Not to defend Apple - A lot of attempts of integrating AI
| are shot in the dark that lilely make no sense.
|
| However, Apple did have a use case that would be an obvious
| improvement. The very thing LLMs excel at is at processing
| and generating natural language. Improving Siri with LLM
| capabilities was the obvious move, especially at a time
| where LLM providers are willing to burn cash to reach a
| wider use base. It speaks volumes of a company that is just
| rent seeking their position in the smartphone market at
| this point.
| rurp wrote:
| If true, that's pathetic on Apple's part. The unreliability of
| LLMs was maybe the biggest topic in the entire tech industry
| around that time. To be ignorant of that basic fact would be an
| incredibly bad look.
|
| I have no insider knowledge but to me on the outside it looks
| like the same old panicky hype-chasing we've all seen in other
| contexts. Some executives kept reading and hearing about AI AI
| AI!, and were terrified of being left behind. The many voices
| of reason within the company pointing out the correct risks and
| tradeoffs to consider were ignored while the over-confident
| voices blustered their way onto the roadmap.
| sschueller wrote:
| Why does Whatsapp allow this? It defeats their whole encryption
| Spiel.
| bspammer wrote:
| No amount of in-transit encryption can help when google
| controls the OS.
| ivell wrote:
| Being unable to easily uninstall is quite annoying. Reminds me of
| the old Microsoft with their deep integration of Internet
| Explorer into the OS.
| saidinesh5 wrote:
| Not exactly related, but does anyone know what's the best way to
| backup WhatsApp data on an Android phone without using Google
| drive these days?
| ilpianista wrote:
| I use Syncthing to backup WA and Signal
| amlib wrote:
| But isn't it quite useless to backup WA when it's all
| encrypted and you can't backup the key?
| ilpianista wrote:
| The backup key is shown the first time you enable
| encryption.
| fransje26 wrote:
| Would you happen to have good resources detailing the
| process?
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| There is a WhatsApp folder on your phone, which contains the
| database of messages. You can just backup the entire folder by
| any standard backup method, including copy pasting.
| declan_roberts wrote:
| At least Google users get a usable AI for all of their phones
| spying.
|
| Siri can't even pronounce my own name correctly!
| qwertox wrote:
| Just a kind reminder that you can't delete chats on Gemini if
| you're using a Google Workspace account.
|
| I don't know how they believe that this is remotely a good thing,
| or if this is even in accordance with the GDPR.
|
| Now just assume something odd happens and it pulls in a couple of
| your WhatsApp messages into its Activity History.
| srameshc wrote:
| This is concerning but I am telling my Whatsapp user friends
| about the access to their immense data that Meta has and they
| should be concerned. But even the friends in tech, who lead
| massive product development, feel there is nothing concerning.
| tqi wrote:
| What do you tell them the risk is?
| penguin_booze wrote:
| "What are you going to do, huh?" -- with love, Google.
| devn0ll wrote:
| I just switched to /e/os. Soooo no the fuck they can't!
|
| God. That feels good. Everyone should try this.
| danieldk wrote:
| Or GrapheneOS, the best way to thank Google for making Pixel
| :).
|
| (Until they have their own phone.)
| zikduruqe wrote:
| (Until they have their own phone.)
|
| ... looks over at Framework
| jacquesm wrote:
| Unless your counterparty uses Google / Android.
| bilekas wrote:
| There seems to be this blatant forcing AI products on people.
| WhatsApp themselves have an AI feature that you can't turn off or
| remove. Their only advice is to simply not use it. Is it just a
| massive push before regulations or are they speed running
| annoying everyone so much that regulation is the only option?
| tempodox wrote:
| If this is true, Zuck will be furious.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| How does it work technically?
|
| Does Whatsapp expose these messages via an API? If yes, then it
| seems like this is not only on Google.
|
| If no: Are they reading data from raw UI widgets? Are they
| intercepting input controls? Are they intercepting network
| traffic? That seems unlikely, given its probably end to end
| encrypted and the decryption happens within the scope of the
| Whatsapp process.
| netsharc wrote:
| > If no: Are they reading data from raw UI widgets? Are they
| intercepting input controls?
|
| Why not... they control the OS, it'd be trivial to add hooks to
| the "draw widget" command to intercept that it's about to draw
| a text widget for WhatsApp, and then ask it to log the text.
| alok-g wrote:
| My understanding (may be wrong):
|
| WhatsApp data is encrypted, however, the keys are on the device
| itself and accessible on Android. There are many third-party
| apps that support transferring WhatsApp data from one phone to
| another, and some even claim so between Android and iOS
| devices. As I understand, the chats are in some usual database
| format. So anyone having access to the device can read the data
| even without WhatsApp being there itself (as far as the data is
| there).
| callmeal wrote:
| >Does Whatsapp expose these messages via an API?
|
| Whatsapp has dark patterns that "guide" you to "archive" your
| chats on google drive.
| RachelF wrote:
| WhatsApp by default backs up messages to Google Drive. It has
| done so for many years. Google likely already has all your chat
| data.
| shabazahmed wrote:
| That data is encrypted
| sabellito wrote:
| Now it is, but when they offered this feature initially it
| wasn't, and when they added the feature, you had to go in the
| options to turn it on. Evil.
| shabazahmed wrote:
| May be they are reading the notification using notifications
| reading service (Feature in Android) and use intents to send
| messages. But from intent you can either share (user action) a
| message to a particular contact or automatically open whatsapp on
| a particular contact and prefill the message in text box. May be
| whatapp may have exposed an intent to directly send message or
| they are just prefilling the text box
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| This is why we need free software and free phones. I want the
| software I run to work for me.
| Bender wrote:
| _Google promises_
|
| That gave me a good belly laugh. Thankyou Google.
| sneak wrote:
| Don't most people do WhatsApp backups to Google Drive? Google
| already has your entire chat history.
| happosai wrote:
| This really annoys the shit out of me. First people work hard to
| enable E2E encryption on WhatsApp, then Google goes "lol we'll
| just upload your chats to Gemini cloud".
| johnwayne666 wrote:
| Any way for other AI apps to do that. It could be nice to have a
| local open source app doing the same. Does something like that
| exist?
| hulitu wrote:
| > Google can now read your WhatsApp messages
|
| Now ? I guess some people really need a reality check. Google
| controls the OS which runs of your phone and has access to all
| your data. Just like Apple or Microsoft.
| MrDresden wrote:
| Honestly I was surprised not to see an announcement for some kind
| of agentic API in Android during GIO. Think some kind of
| combination of content providers and a rest interface, defined by
| the developers of each app.
|
| Having the system level agent needing to interface with the UI in
| such a messy way doesn't feel like the best way for it to
| accomplish its tasks.
| user568439 wrote:
| It looks like a new EU fine is coming... But this time it should
| come fast because this is unacceptable
| KoolKat23 wrote:
| Sorry, but hasn't Google Assistant had this same access for the
| past 10 years?
|
| Do you not have to prompt Gemini to initiate any search?
| taeric wrote:
| I confess I got a pretty good laugh out of seeing this on the
| same day I saw billboards bragging that "not even WhatsApp can
| read your messages." Oops.
| DLoupe wrote:
| If you use Google to backup your WhatsApp chats (most people do),
| Google can already read your messages, because the backup is not
| encrypted.
| morsch wrote:
| I think this hasn't been true for a couple of years now
|
| https://faq.whatsapp.com/490592613091019
| callmeal wrote:
| Encrypted backups are "off" by default and need to be
| explicity turned on.
| andy99 wrote:
| I use an 8 year old android phone I've been considering updating.
| Reading this thread has talked me out of it.
| iku wrote:
| Sorry, but this title sounds overly click-baity to me. Google
| definitely can't read or write _my_ WhatsApp messages. Because
| I'm not using an Android /Google phone with WhatsApp on it.
| Although I am using both Gemini and WhatsApp, the whole article
| doesn't apply to me, and surely I'm not unique in this.
| Labov wrote:
| Oof, that's not what the WhatsApp ads on the train station
| platform say.
| dineol wrote:
| just stop using whatsapp
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