TL; PhD
- Facebook hired a team of researchers to analyze WhatsApp encryption.
- The goal is to have a way to data mining WhatsApp messages without actually decrypting them.
- A report stated that Facebook did this for advertising purposes.
One of the hallmark features of the chat application WhatsApp is its end-to-end encryption. This means that only people you have given permission to read your messages-not even WhatsApp itself. This should give you peace of mind, and you can say what you want to say without anyone listening.
Of course, if you can’t access your chat history, it’s difficult to data mining the text to provide targeted advertising. This WhatsApp encryption barrier is what the parent company Facebook is trying to overcome.The company has confirmed that every information, It has hired a team of researchers to solve this problem.
related: 8 new features that WhatsApp should add from other messaging apps
According to the report, Facebook hopes to design a way to analyze WhatsApp chats without actually decrypting those chats. This is called “homomorphic encryption”. In theory, this would allow Facebook to collect data from chats without infringing on the privacy of any individual user.
It is unclear how this is possible.However, according to information, The purpose of the research is exactly what you expect: Facebook may want to perform data mining on your WhatsApp chats to provide targeted advertising. However, as expected, Facebook denied this allegation.It tells information “It is too early for us to consider using homomorphic encryption for WhatsApp.”
WhatsApp encryption: the new money making tool?
This news was released in the context of several Facebook-related issues. Recently, Facebook and Apple have been at war on iPhone privacy issues. Apple’s iOS 14 allows users to opt out of ad tracking for all applications. This has a negative impact on Facebook’s core business of advertising.
When you put these things together, it’s clear what Facebook’s possible goal is: find new ways to monetize its huge data collection. But with WhatsApp encryption, it cannot really do this on that particular platform. Homomorphic encryption can help solve this problem.
However, if this change occurs, how many WhatsApp users will leave the platform? After Facebook updated the WhatsApp privacy policy, a large number of users have poured into other encrypted platforms, such as Telegram and Signal. Of course, Facebook’s idea of “analyzing” encrypted messages on WhatsApp will lead to greater outflows.