Post #3493460

There's an article on the BBC about WhatsApp rolling out usernames and it includes the quote: "WhatsApp does not use the content of private chats for advertising. Those are protected by end-to-end-encryption, meaning the firm cannot read the contents of messages." I see this language used a lot. So.. am I being dumb.. or is this a little white lie? Sure, end-to-end encryption means that Meta (or whoever) can't read messages in flight or at rest on their servers, but.. everyone in a chat's messages are clearly unencrypted in your devices memory at least partially at some point. Now, Meta would be stupid to give the game away by directly targeting ads at you based on your chats, or to send that data to their servers through a side channel (and no doubt some infosec people would have spotted that) but.. I mean.. they can still analyse the chats on the device, right? So.. am I stupid, or is this quote misguided/misleading? WhatsApp is "free"... so we are the product after all.