One of the features that WhatsApp highlights among its security tools is the end-to-end encryption of its messages as a guarantee of privacy.
According to recently released information, Facebook is investigating a way to analyze, for advertising purposes, the content of the encrypted data of these chats, but without having to decrypt them.
End-to-end encryption has been present in WhatsApp messages since 2016. In short, this technology prevents messages from being intercepted by third parties, even if the servers of this platform are accessed. Currently, Facebook is in search of artificial intelligence researchers, to develop a study around this topic.
Although it has been postponed on more than one occasion, Facebook still has plans to add advertising on WhatsApp. Under this point, ad personalization usually relies on data explicitly extracted from each user’s browsing information. With this research, Facebook could make its way to start filtering and profiling ads based on encrypted WhatsApp messages. Facebook could also use the findings to encrypt user data without affecting its ad targeting approaches.
Facebook plans to use a technique called homomorphic encryption
This technique is called “homomorphic encryption” and relies heavily on mathematical formulas. Other large media companies, such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, are also working on tackling this technique. The goal of homomorphic encryption is to allow companies to read and analyze data while it remains encrypted, safeguarding the privacy of its owners.
Facebook told that it is “too early for us to consider homomorphic encryption for WhatsApp at this time.” The company could reap significant benefits by employing this technology. Considering that Facebook’s business model has advertising campaigns as one of its main revenue pillars, effective audience targeting aligned with its business purposes could be addressed with this technique. In addition, this initiative could be aligned with the emerging legal regulations and the growing citizen interest in the way the company manages the personal information of its users.
This initiative responds to a project deployed at an early stage. Facebook could be years away from taking advantage of homomorphic encryption. When the time comes, whether by this or another company, it would set an important precedent for the evolution of online advertising systems.
