
Private WhatsApp groups visible in Google searches - DyslexicAtheist
https://www.dw.com/en/private-whatsapp-groups-visible-in-google-searches/a-52468603?maca=en-Twitter-sharing
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whereistimbo
It's unsurprising. Here's capture of chat.whatsapp.com robots.txt page:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200222114340/https://chat.what...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200222114340/https://chat.whatsapp.com/robots.txt)

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jsjddbbwj
>DW's Jordan Wildon discovered the bug on Friday. "Your WhatsApp groups may
not be as secure as you think they are," he tweeted

If a link to your whatsapp group ends up crawled by Google it's because you
posted it in a public website, and then you clearly don't care how secure your
group is

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lm28469
If it's a group and someone other than you post the link somewhere you'd be
exposed without knowing, that you care or not doesn't really matter.

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mcraiha
There could be an API for checking if URLs/links given in social media
platforms should be indexed or followed. e.g.
[https://ispublic.facebook.com/whatsappgroup/id35425265](https://ispublic.facebook.com/whatsappgroup/id35425265)

~~~
ryanlol
There could be, but why? Why would anyone use that?

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gundmc
The article calls this a "bug", but I don't see how this can be anything other
than working as intended?

I generate a link X to do Y on application Z. I post link X on a public
website. Crawlers index the public site. When I search Y application Z, the
page containing link X is returned in the results.

What action is the author expecting? For all search engines to recognize and
ignore these URLs? What about malicious actors? Ask them nicely to ignore?

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MickerNews
they're expecting that the word private means something. Why do you think that
an unauthenticated user should be able to read comments of a private group
just because they have a URL?

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ta999999171
> they're expecting that the word private means something

In a world where Facebook and Google have widespread vulns exposed on at
minimum a yearly basis, that's their fault for not reading, and just "trusting
the computer".

I'm not a chef, but I make sure I know where my food's coming from to the best
of my ability.

