A vulnerability in WhatsApp allows you to monitor the sleep habits of their users

EUROPA PRESS

• An engineer says that this app allows you to choose the possibility to see the last login in the application, but it is not possible to hide the status indicator ‘In-line’.
• On the basis of this vulnerability, has developed an extension for Chrome that allows you to monitor users and make a chart of the routines of activity.
• The author of this extension to alert you that these data could be sold to health insurers, and credit agencies.

An engineer of ‘software’ has detected avulnerability in the messaging application WhatsApp through which it is possible to know information about your activity using the indicator ‘In the line’ of the ‘app’. To this end, has developed an extension for the Google Chrome browser which is able to monitor the activity of other users.

The engineer ‘software’ Rob Heaton has published a ‘post’ his personal website where details that WhatsApp allows its users to choose which people can see your last login in the application —all over the world, all of your contacts, or no one— butit is not possible to hide the status indicator is ‘On line’ that are shown in real time.

On the basis of this vulnerability, Heaton has developedan extension for Google Chrome, set up with the web version of WhatsApp, allows you to monitor and draw a graph of the routines of the application’s activity by its users, and thus obtain personal information such as the sleeping habits of the person espiada.

Rob Heaton has raised in his publication a scenario in which an individual avails itself of this extension, the configurable “with four lines of JavaScript”, to control the habits of use of WhatsApp of a person, and as well determine what their sleep schedules. Is more, the computer science engineer has managed to combine the monitored data of multiple users to determine whether these are in contact with each other.

The author of this Chrome extension has warned that this data could be sold to health insurers, and credit agencies, “both very suspicious with people who are awake at four in the morning.”

Tecnología