[cr3ative]

I've dealt with a small amount of MVNO negotiations and this company has put many red flags up in my mind.

It may be obvious to someone else, but I'd like to know how they detect a photo or video being sent, rather than text? WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted, so they can't be proxying the data to the servers. Are they just guessing from the total data transfer seen from the subscriber?

There's a lot of unanswered questions. The CEO appears to have a fairly poor track record of running this kind of freemium global-SIM project, too, having done some digging. I'll watch with interest.

[tom-lord]

Metadata doesn't get encrypted.

That question is, at least, fairly easy to answer.

[cr3ative]

That's good to know. I assume most mobile operators sniff this traffic already, but it does feel a bit strange knowing up-front that they're going to be closely monitoring that kind of thing. Maybe I'm paranoid!

[fulafel]

Differentiating pictures and videos from chat traffic is likely an easy traffic analysis problem, unless WhatsApp are using deliberate countermeasures.

[rahimnathwani]

How long before someone starts tunneling IP over WhatsApp messages?

https://github.com/matiasinsaurralde/facebook-tunnel

[orjan]

Just to spare someone else from googling it:

MVNO = Mobile Virtual Network Operator.

[wodenokoto]

> but I'd like to know how they detect a photo or video being sent

the app could count photo and images send and supply that data through a different channel.

[burnte]

Well, it's trivial for the app to simply add a flag that there is a photo or video in the encrypted content. End to end encryption doesn't mean the app doesn't know what you're sending, it means the company can't decrypt the contents.

[kayoone]

But that does not explain how the WhatSim guys can detect multimedia content and charge accordingly. They can't decrypt the traffic and can't modify the app itself.

[pjc50]

I think (it's been a while since I looked at this) the multimedia traffic goes to a different set of whatsapp servers.

[burnte]

If the APP itself taks care of monitoring when pix and videos are sent, then the SIM doesn't have to. And since the SIM is only for use with the app, your problem is taken care of.

[cr3ative]

The SIM and the app are different companies, that's not going to happen. WhatsApp will never associate themselves with WhatSim.

[burnte]

Ah, I was unaware of that, thanks.