WhatsApp has a weakness that can be exploited to spy on a person's sleep patterns, from sleeping hours, waking hours, to length of sleep.
This disadvantage arises from the "last seen" feature in WhatsApp.
The feature lets users know when someone last opened WhatsApp.
Users can indeed set anyone who can see the last seen, ranging from everyone (everyone), contact (only your contacts), or none (no one).
Even so, how many users manage to make last seen can not be seen by anyone?
Apparently not much.
What's dangerous is that others who do not even have high-level technical skills are able to collect last-seen data on WhatsApp, analyze, and figure out what their sleep patterns are.
At least so according to a software engineer named Rob Heaton.
Previously, Rob Heaton also once spit a gap on Facebook and Tinder.
WhatsApp exploit step demonstrates Rob Heaton with web access via Chrome browser for desktop.
Rob Heaton created the Chrome extension to observe and record the online activity of all of its WhatsApp contacts.
From there emerging data arranged neatly and can be analyzed related to sleep pattern.
More terrible, this exploitation can show anyone who contacts WhatsApp interconnected.
The way to stay is to match the pattern of online contact activity A and contact B in WhatsApp.
If the pattern is really the same and they are known to each other, chances are they chat intensely in WhatsApp.
According to Rob Heaton, this exploitation is easily developed for larger scales.
That way, certain individuals can sell analytics data from WhatsApp exploits to advertisers or third-party companies.
For example, sleeping drug companies targeting people with poor sleep patterns.
The data analysis of WhatsApp exploitation is certainly very functional.
Until now Facebook subsidiary has not commented.
Something prevented me from ever using What's app even though a lot of my contacts are on it. I still have this feeling that it's not fully transparent even though people got hype when they made their texting "encrypted". Good read.
Thanks my friend