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Facebook AI Encryption Social Networks

Facebook Researchers Hope To Bring Together Two Foes: Encryption and Ads 53

Facebook is bulking up a team of artificial intelligence researchers, including a key hire from Microsoft, to study ways of analyzing encrypted data without decrypting it, the company confirmed to the Information. From the report: The research could allow Facebook to target ads based on encrypted messages on its WhatsApp messenger, or to encrypt the data it collects on billions of users without hurting its ad-targeting capabilities, outside experts say. Facebook is one of several technology giants, including cloud computing providers Microsoft, Amazon and Google, now researching an emerging field known as homomorphic encryption. Researchers hope the technology will allow companies to analyze personal information, including medical records and financial data, while keeping the information encrypted and protected from cybersecurity threats or, in Facebook's case, leaks to advertisers or other parties.
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Facebook Researchers Hope To Bring Together Two Foes: Encryption and Ads

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  • by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2021 @10:24AM (#61650803)

    Facebook is bulking up a team of artificial intelligence researchers...

    Wait, are they making a team of researchers who work on artificial intelligence, or researchers made up of artificial intelligence?

  • Not how that works (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dareth ( 47614 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2021 @10:30AM (#61650815)

    From Wikipedia homomorphic encryption [wikipedia.org] is the ability to do operations such as math calculations on encrypted data and the results be encrypted and able to be decrypted to the same answer as if you had decrypted the inputs first.

    How can advertising target anything if the results stay encrypted?

    • by Arethan ( 223197 )

      "123" == "car" ?
      1 == c ?
      2 == a ?
      3 == r ?

      123 == "check out the new mitzubishi penetrator at your local dealer today"

      How can advertising target anything if the results stay encrypted?

      tldr; it can't

      • Sounds like they'll just keep unencrypted side-car data that represents the same info and say 'we complied with the data protection and privacy laws, see?!?' while functionally violating them.
      • If WhatsApp is encrypting properly, it is not using a simple substitution cipher. There is no way AI or any researcher should be able to determine the content of these messages.

        What they can do, however, is perform traffic analysis to see who is communicating with who and then look at their public profiles and posts to establish commonality.

      • That's not how modern encryption works. A block of ciphertext is indistinguishable from a block of randomly generated numbers when you perform a frequency analysis. Only long obsoleted encryption schemes break this rule.

    • results stay encrypted? They can't, I am thinking they want it to stay encrupted until it is past the ad blockers so user must open it and look to get rid of it.
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Its ads. They will take a guess based on time, place, history and user profile.

    • This. Microsoft did something similar with an ad-fetching system that can show ads based on what you say around your Xbox. They argue that the contents of your conversation are kept private, which is only true in a very specific way. If you're talking about pizza and based on that, the system loads an ad about pizza without sending any of the contents of the conversation out, unless all the data used in fetching the generic pizza ad is encrypted and entirely unlogged (and that would require a lot of trust i

      • Especially when a conversation about, say, a cancer diagnosis is treated that way. If you have a conversation about mesothelioma you can be the info will be sold to the world+dog as ambulance chasers and HR agencies will pay.
      • It is therefore leaky encryption - or encryption with a side channel; compromised encryption which should be avoided; a.k.a. Crapware.
    • see e.g. Microsoft seal and cryptonets. The encrypted communication goes through an advertising classifier neural network in the cloud without being decrypted. The computed advertising categories are added to the message in encrypted format. On the client when the message is decrypted so is the advertizing metadata, then a corresponding ad is served. The clue is that the cloud computation never sees the input or metadata in clear text.

  • by tekram ( 8023518 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2021 @10:31AM (#61650825)
    FB, Microsoft, Amazon and Google, now researching an emerging field known as homomorphic encryption... analyzing encrypted data without decrypting it, They are admitting that they would study user content even if they don't technically 'decrypt' it. What if users just stop using their apps?
    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      That is not what homomorphic encryption is. Homomorphic encryption is about transforming encrypted data without decrypting it. It does not allow you to actually look into the data.

  • For God's sake. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Randseed ( 132501 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2021 @10:32AM (#61650829)
    If you have supposed end-to-end encryption and the provider can read anything in it, then the encryption is flawed. So WhatsApp basically admitted that their security sucks balls. Fuck you, Zuckerturd.
    • I suspect this is aimed more at hooking those who buy ads.

      Make a big song and dance about inventing ads that can target encrypted traffic, sell this new opportunity to target people to advertisers, relax as advertisers are unable to prove you wrong.

  • by Arethan ( 223197 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2021 @10:34AM (#61650837) Journal

    The research could allow Facebook to target ads based on encrypted messages on its WhatsApp messenger

    If you can target the ad based on the message, then there is some facet of that message that is inherently insecure. At some point in the targeting process this boils down to keyword/adword matching, which implicitly requires the content of the message to determined.

    • Yeah, I call shenanigans.

      I think this is intentional vaporware - a pretend implementation of parallel reconstruction designed to give them cover. Facebook and these other companies will be decrypting and looking at the actual content on your device, and use that to target ads - but they will be claiming “oh, no, we can accurately target the ads based on the encrypted data, thanks to our magical encryption fairies!”

  • You wouldn't have to worry about encrypting them.
  • by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2021 @10:40AM (#61650859)

    They may be a tiny bit less ridiculous than random ads, but they are still mostly useless.
    I'm a machinist and tool junkie, so I get ads for tools. They are almost all for tools I already have or have decided not to buy. They are totally useless to me.
    What would be informative would be ads for tools I didn't know about that might be useful to me.
    If targeted ads were accurately targeted, I would like them

    • What would be informative would be ads for tools I didn't know about that might be useful to me.

      Without having a history of the tools that you've bought, the ad selector wouldn't be able to prioritize other tools, and you'd need a considerable amount of AI processing to be able to determine "based on this inventory of tools, what other tools would be useful?" And I'm pretty sure that the companies buying ad presentations are "I want to sell tools to people who are interested in tools" as a scattergun approach, because the amount of data to do that is well beyond what is collected now. Or the algorithm

    • by swell ( 195815 )

      That's because advertisements are a desperate attempt to get you to buy 'commodity' products. When a company sells widgets that are practically identical to the widgets that other companies sell, it needs to find an edge. There are three options:

      > Price - the company can sell for less than the competition
      > Quality - they can try to make the product better somehow
      > Advertise - try to overwhelm consumers with ads

      None of these is likely to lead to great success. If the company had any sense, it would

    • What you need to do is buy crappier tools which break frequently, so that you have a constant need for replacements.
    • What would be informative would be ads for tools I didn't know about that might be useful to me.

      So there needs to be more research into mind-reading an audience that's already sensitive to privacy loss.

      How about we turn the problem one-eighty and consumers send their AI assistants out into the internet finding things they're interested in and bringing those back.

      Rewarded are those that have interesting products with a good social reputation (social scores applied to businesses).

    • [Ads] are almost all for tools I already have or have decided not to buy. [...] What would be informative would be ads for tools I didn't know about that might be useful to me.

      I'd like to have some local agent, running on my machine only, that would know my history and purchases and would filter out useless ads while allowing the other ones through. I surely wouldn't want this agent to run on some company's machines, and store what I consider my private data on their cloud though.

      This could be improved by having the local agent auction my attention: the various ads on the page compete on price, and only the one(s) that pay enough gets through (or get priority). At least this way

  • Researchers hope the technology will allow companies to analyze personal information, including medical records and financial data, while keeping the information encrypted

    Of course, no government would want to be able to analyze personal information that was encrypted, and pay serious money to a a company that can do it, while keeping up the facade that the transmissions were encrypted and thus safe from prying eyes who would come get you.

    WhatsApp, the encrypted comms app approved by repressive regimes e

    • Google: We value privacy and security. Now we will nag you all about it and make you solve 'puzzles' to get to the content you want. Because we care so goddamn much!

      P.S.: There are 5 lights. Now how many lights do you see?

  • Unfortunately we'll try every encryption trick in the book (and on bathroom walls) to avoid any ads.
    And we're not even ON Facebook.

  • by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2021 @11:21AM (#61651043) Journal

    ..hey, I know! We'll break everyones' encryption in order to target ads at them, and just tell them we're not breaking encryption!
    Everyone will believe it because people are fundamentally stupid!

    Eat shit and die, Facebook motherfuckers. KIll you all, burn every last piece of Facebook hardware to ash.

  • Why do I get a bunch of Ads for diapers on all my local devices?

    I have no need for them, nor does my wife, and my 18 Year old Daughter, who seems to be wearing a lot of baggy clothing lately, I guess it is just the trend for this year hasn't needed them in a long time.

         

  • by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday August 03, 2021 @11:48AM (#61651175)

    is working on how to get rid of both, Facebook and ads.

  • My take is this is all about Cell Phones, why ? My guess is encryption type is rather standard between Appl and Android plus they can tell where and who you are with your Cell.

    With Linux or BSD Laptops/Desktops, it is easy to spoof location, MAC address and maybe even encryption method.

  • Stories on /. should be banned if there is only one link and that goes to a paywall.
  • ...they just encrypt ads ?
  • Omfg, you and your "partners" are one of the primary eavesdropping concerns.

    Stopping everyone except government and gigantic corporations' ad deparments from rummaging around inside my underpants isn't stopping anything at all.

  • How do you get relevant ad targeting data out of something such as "CEIIH7;3A" without some knowlege of what "CEIIH7;3A" actually means?

    If they are decrypting 'just enough' to get relevant info to target ads, then they have some idea of what the messages are.

    The whole idea that they are not decrypting messages even and just looking for patterns in the data stream with zero knowledge of what the actual content is just reeks of bullshit.

    • Ok, I got the dust out of my brain, reread TFS and when I got to this: "Google, now researching an emerging field known as homomorphic encryption", I came to one conclusion- back door.

      Nice attempt to hide this through Star Trek Voyager-esque terms, you goddamn dickbags (Google).

  • Like any hypocrite in church, Google sings the holy privacy and security hymns the loudest and shows the most outward and fake piety.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein

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