WhatsApp and sandboxing.

maqueen

Never had including any socials. Basically forced to use recently because of work situation.

Few years ago had interesting conversation with someone about their using instagram and how pertinent ads would appear without any entering of interests. It was obvious microphone being used. Recent reports of Whatsapp turning on microphones.

Putting in second profile not really practical. Does app sandboxing stop this situation or should some specific settings be tweaked?

spiral

maqueen
ads in the way youre describing are often based on local wifi association and not microphone snooping.

Your friend recently has searched for "the hottest restaurant town." Your friend joins your wifi.

Now that your friend is on your wifi, Facebook assumes you and your friend have lots in common. Facebook then assumes that YOU also would probably like to know more about the hottest restaurant in town, and so it shows you ads for it.

Unless you both are very careful to activate your vpns, FB will figure you out.

tango

maqueen

If you dont put it in a separate profile then it is obviously going to try and scrape whatever data it can get from your other apps. You can toggle off everything like microphone etc and just enable it when doing an audio/video call. The only thing you really need enabled is contacts, but that is where the second profile would make the difference as you could just use whatsapp only contacts in that profile and keep your other contacts private in other profile.
Just to add i dont use it personally but i understand some people need to use it.

maqueen

No, there was no shared wifi. Were specifically talking about them not entering any data into phone (FB, Instagram, web search, etc.), but getting targeted ads relevant to conversations.

Specfic question directed to GOS, sandboxing and peripheral access with WhatsApp.

matchboxbananasynergy

An app cannot arbitrarily decide to access the microphone or anything else that you deny it permission to.

For microphone specifically, you can allow it while in use, allow it only once, or deny it.