I know, that’s kind of paranoid, but I’m not paranoid like “the gov can hear me through my phones mic and SIM card without internet connection”. No, I’m not like that.

I’m just telling, I’ve talked with a few friends and after that I noticed ads about the exact same subject of our chat, and I know this can be a false impression because sometimes we forget that we had searched about the same subject before, then we have the illusion an app is spying on us, but actually we searched about it without noticing.

That can be true yea, but lately this is happening too much (with too much I mean 3-4 times, which is too much for this context).

Also, I don’t see ads, it’s extremely rare I see any ad, I use uBlock Origin and DNS Filter with the most aggressive filters, even tho, I still had this very impression in the few times I had seen ads.

I noticed this on the messages to myself too, I often use WhatsApp to transfer quick URLs and reminders to my phone via “message to me”.

I’m now encrypting messages before sending to me and decrypting on my phone, that can be paranoid I know, I don’t have anything important I just don’t want any company making me an idiot without I knowing it.

What do you guys think about it? Does anyone noticed something similar?

Another thing is that I don’t use Google so even if I search somewhere in theory I should be protected by DuckDuckGo and Startpage (which I use).

  • 64bithero@lemmy.world
    3·
    8 days ago

    So you are surprised Facebook the company whose profit model is entirely ads is using data on WhatsApp to profit off ads?

    No I don’t believe you.

    May I recommend signal or stoat ? Or session ? Or so many better things.

    You’ve given up on Reddit I assume enjoying the fediverse I think you try it with chat too

  • Autonomous User@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    8 days ago

    WhatApp fails to include a libre software license text file. We do not control it. So, it has never been secure.

    Weird you are still feeding it over getting a different app.

  • PierceTheBubble@lemmy.ml
    21·
    8 days ago

    The biggest privacy loophole in WhatsApp is cloud backups. By default, unencrypted updates to the backup, flow through WhatsApp servers in a readable format, to be encrypted on the server-side by the cloud providers (Google or Apple). Even if specifically opting into E2EE backups, the cloud provider still receives the contents in readable format (as it does the encryption of the backup). Even if you personally don’t have this “feature” enabled, the other end might; and your interactions are also included in their backups. On a stock device there’s an entire myriad of other potential vectors; too many to list here.