Anyone on WhatsApp will understand that my title of this letter already says it all, but I’ll expand just a bit.
Myself being quite active on the program for business chats and family groups, I’m not here to criticize those who use it, but rather would like to bring an awareness to the users.
On one of my family groups this week, one family member forwarded a picture, but not for the purpose of spreading. It was to exclaim her shock.
“Can you imagine what this girl must feel like right now?” she wrote underneath the photo that thousands must have received. And then a conversation ensued as to how someone had the ‘Chutzpa’ to release such an item for the world to see. We were just blown away how this innocent girl was just humiliated by the world – all in just a couple of minutes. That’s all it took, a couple of minutes. No matter what this girl does now, there’s no way to undo the damage. Period.
Can you imagine, a girl, or anyone for that matter, works all her teen life looking forward to build a home with her future husband with the name she worked to build for herself, and along comes someone with a grudge and decides to publicly humiliate her? To put it mildly, she is now the laugh on the streets. She was literally publicly killed, sentenced to death by someone with a grudge.
Some are probably thinking to themselves, me? Oh, I just innocently forwarded the message, you know, just for a good laugh.
Really? Think about if the scenario were reversed, and it was you so publicly humiliated.
All it took was a couple of simple ‘forwards’ and this girl’s life was killed.
Perhaps I’m wasting my time even addressing this issue, I just couldn’t sit by watching this occur without saying anything.
Thank you TLS for giving me the opportunity to express my thoughts.
A local resident,
Lakewood, NJ.
(TLS welcomes your letters by submitting them to newstips@thelakewoodscoop.com)
Although I am not aware of this death sentence you are referring to I can share with you that 2 days ago all of us in my family with whats ap were informed through a chat about the untimely petira of a young girl we have been Davening for. We cried and we were Mechazek each other and then 20 minutes later we were texted that the girl was in fact still alive and needed our teffilos. Talk about a death sentence…….
These girls did act very inappropriately and they knew they were getting videoed .while they do not deserve to have their videos go all over they should have realized this day in age you don’t let anybody video anything you do . And of course who ever sent it out and made the follow up pictures is a murderer there’s no words to describe what a disgusting thing that person did.
Lose the WhatsApp ASAP. Anyone can take overANY device running it ANYTIME no password needed.
Ron, can you elaborate?
I never heard of this trash. Whatever happened to privacy and modesty?
There is a app called Dstrux downloadable from amazon that deletes messages retroactively on whatsapp although it only deletes from the phone that activates this program to wherever the message, video, picture went to in that chain of forwarding.
Essentially this means it can be taken back if only one knows of dstrux and does so.
I have what’s app and I’ve never received anything like this like all things be careful of whom you hang out with and how much access you give them
I’d just like to point out The writer says it’s an innocent girl if you saw the video the girl wasn’t so innocent
So now anyone who didn’t see the footage will make sure to get their hands on it to see what you are talking about. Great idea publicizing what happened! You just killed this girl even more! (I understand the point was the awareness of what WhatsApp can cause, details of the story should not have been put in the letter.)
Yup. WhatsApp allows COMPLETE access to the device by ANYONE. No hacking necessary. Today’s news. No time for article today. Glad someone posted so I could notify by comment. Oh, same for Skype. Message from Garcia?
Wow! How do you even begin to ask mechila for this? How do you reach out to thousands of people to try to take back what you did? Scary? The person who sent this should be shoel eitza ASAP as to what course of action to take to prevent any spritual consequences that person may suffer in this world that all too often is the result of these kinds of activities. hashem yishmor.
U say those girls are innocent??? Who ever watched the video can clearly see they are not innocent at all! & btw the girl herself videod it & sent it out herself. Don’t blame anyone but her. U can say she committed suicide mabye.
While I am not familiar with the specific video/image that you are addressing, a few comments are in order:
1. Someone on your chat is a ba’al lashon hora. Whatever her motivations may have been (“I can’t believe that this was shared, etc), she willfully shared a degrading image with an entire group. Your indignation at the world at large should be focused at your own family member who didn’t see the harm in posting that image to your group.
2. WhatsApp, like most forms of technology, is neither good nor bad. It is a very powerful tool that can be used properly or horribly abused.
3. On my own family chat, a halacha from hilchos lashon hara is posted every morning. I don’t claim that no one ever abuses our chat but when that happens the person is called on it and the ensuing discussion is usually helpful for all.
I am not referring to a video. In fact, I do not know what video you are talking about. I am talking about an image that was clearly taken without the girl’s consent.
can we create a TLS whatsapp group so we can all see what this is about? sounds like there are pictures, videos and whoknowswhatelse. Let’s be proactive and get everyone the opportunity to see it and then wring our hands and call for teshuva.
Ron Benvenisti: Yo. I am a professional penetration tester. It is my job to hack companies, websites, and anything else that needs hacking. Mobile apps are most definitely included. I’ve been professionally hacking things for years, and I work in an office with some of the top security professionals in the world.
I am OSCP OSWP and OSCE, among many others (use google if you don’t know what those are.), just to prove my qualifications.
Point is, NO SUCH WHATSAPP HACK EXISTS! Or, if it does, and I am unaware, POST A SOURCE. I am subscribed to several 0day lists, so I would know if it dropped there.
Post a source if you know of a truly dangerous hack against whatsapp.
If not, please don’t scare people by posting scareware things.
Moral of the story is whatever u do in life “someone is always watching “
@Security Engineer…. so you don’t get Hacker News? Did you check today’s email? Does any one of the big machers in your bigshot office check Hacker News? Alphabet soup after your name means ZIP.
Ron Benvenisti: I remember last time I commented about something you wrote here, you took it as a personal attack, and called me unprofessional. https://thelakewoodscoop.com/2014/08/malware-is-a-good-thing-by-ron-benvenisti.html See my comments in the thread. I am not taking this as a personal attack, because I’m going to assume you simply misunderstood the power and prevalence of the hack.
Let me go through some details for some non technical people who may be reading.
The prerequisities:
You must know the victims phone number
You must known the victims MAC address in some cases
You must know how to change your own MAC in those cases
You must have PHYSICAL access to the victims phone
Assuming all of those, it is in the hacking world what we call “GAME OVER” because at that point, you can do whatever you want anyway. Physical access is it. Done. Password or no.
However, lets assume its all you have, and you run the hack. Endgame, you get access to the victim’s WhatsAPP account. NOT ANYTHING ELSE ON THE PHONE. This is simply not how you described the power of the vulnerability. You described above something that is a CRITICAL vulnerability in android, through whatsapp. This is a medium to high at most, limited ONLY to whatsapp.
In other words, *no big deal*. I would not even blink if someone told me he would do this to me.
This is what we in the real hacking world call: falsifying a finding to drum up concern. Dan Kaminski (who as a security professional, you MUST know who he is) has done so on multiple occassions and lost his credibility as a result. Don’t do so yourself.
I stand by my comments. Good Shabbos.
Let’s not decide on our humble part if the victim is innocent or guilty. And is true that a lot of good can be done using social media such as WhatsApp as spreading “The Word” runs extremely fast, however on the other hand “The Word” can spread the same fast for the negative. We must think twice before using such form of Social Media, as it may not be worth the good it can do for us.
I went back and read “Security Engineer’s” comment to my article that he linked to above, to quote:
“You, dear author, are a (moderated). Malware is bad. Malware ruins lives, destroys families, and leaves people with worthless identities. It does not matter if malware is spread by the “good guys” or not, it is a computer program and cannot differentiate who it attacks. I know, because I have analyzed pieces from both sides of the fence.”
So let me vent: You called me a “what” that had to be moderated and that “wasn’t” a personal attack? Why don’t YOU sign your name or your company?
So by your logic if a gun cannot differentiate who it attacks then let’s take the guns away from the cops and see how that works out. You say malware “…destroys families, and leaves people with worthless identities???? If that’s not “scareware” I don’t know what is. Gimme a break.
If you can’t get into a device through WhatsApp, maybe it’s time for a career change.
And BTW, next time qualify your statements in your first comment and not hours later, you would have more credibility with a quick response time, especially in this business or maybe your boss would find out you were schmoozing on TLS on the company dime?
I am the girl who this article is referring to. I honestly don’t care what you all think of me but one thing I’d like you to know is my life has been destroyed. I’ve lost friends, respect from family members, my dignity; even a potential job. Can anybody really be so stupid as to think that I’d intentionally do this to myself? I sent that video to a chat with about 15 close friends on it whom I thought I could trust. Next thing I know my happy world is a dark and terrifying mess. NEVER assume. Ever.
I would like to make a completely diffrent statement how whats app is ruining shidduchim. There a plenty of boys who take girls numbers and put it in their phones to try and see a girl on a resumes picture- girls pictures are now being fowarded to hundreds of boys phones.I have told a bunch of guys that eats at my shabbos table.That this is totaly unacceptable- it is completely untznius, and it gezel to forward ppls whats app picture with out reshus- permission – these boys nodded their heads but claim that most boys will continue to do it- as someone who has experience in the legal world these boys can be sued in court
I don’t know what legal world u live in…a persons profile pic on Whatsapp is basically posted publicly. As much as ppl would like to believe otherwise… Tho being from the shidduch world of 6-8 years ago, I do believe that any1 deciding a shidduch based on a pic is completely ridiculous…
this has nothing to do with whatsapp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! it can occur over texting the same way!!!!!! it has to do with the world being more cyberlly social and word spreading out much faster. this can occur on any form of social media including….