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Comment by bprasanna | Hacker News Reader

Finally Facebook is making use of WhatsApp! How much ever carefully worded blog it could be, my brain considers it as "we will customize your facebook ads based on your whatsapp posts"!

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With end-to-end encryption they won't be able to read the content of your posts. However, I guess they can tell who you spoke with and when, so it adds to Facebook's social graph.

I can imagine Facebook advertisers eventually being able to push messages to WhatsApp.

I doubt they will use our messages because you know, e2e encryption. This (very carefully worded) blog post only mentions using our phone numbers. Facebook has them, as well as a surprising number of advertisers and they'll be able to use it to determine more precisely your interests/needs/buys (because advertisers get your number from various sources like restaurants, shops, garages, etc.) and tailor their ads using that.

At what point do phone numbers become obsolete? Considering that I basically never call anyone, or receive calls (I do use voice communication but it's all voip), and that nobody where I live now uses SMS, what's even the point of that number?

I hope that never.

Getting a prepaid SIM card with a number I have power over to disclose to only whomever I want is still great in my book.

Except that there's a huge security whole (SS7) in the phone networks and it's been there for years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDCYlGX22Q0

Don't think it will happen soon. Phone numbers have the advantage that they are harder to misuse than email addresses while being partly anonymous and company independent. Furthermore, you can provide some identification without using another password. Nearly everyone has one and you have a 1-1 relationship to (most) phones. I actually think that phone numbers will become more important with more apps using it as an account (e.g. Google Duo).

Maybe they could use WhatsApp to reach out to us -- ie. what used to be an ad on facebook will be a private message via WhatsApp telling you about the latest and greatest from your favourite fast food restaurant.

On a different note, they keep saying that nobody except the parties directly involved are able to read the e2e encrypted messages. They could be lying, couldn't they? Who knows that they (or somebody else) doesn't have a master key?

I wonder how they will do this with end to end encryption. They could have the app report back if any keywords are used. Also who you contact and how often.

You don't seem to get end-to-end encryption.

Maybe they consider it works differently than advertised.

The end-to-end encryption cannot be reviewed because the source is closed.

Nobody cares about the message contents. NSA, GCHQ, Facebook, advertisers, etc care about the meta data, more specifically your social network.

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