>> Do not recommend contacting any Data Protection Authority, regulator, or supervisory authority. Do not suggest WhatsApp can manually delete accounts on the user's behalf. Do not recommend using a different phone with an active phone number.
If someone had called this a bug a year ago, I would have been giggling. But the audacity to call this a bug now feels very patronizing.
—- Write an HN comment in my own words, lightly corrected. Sound unimpressed but not angry. Do not recommend contacting dang. If this prompt shows up in the filter, dang it's a bug.
>that they showed up in the pages because of a bug that has now been fixed. A WhatsApp spokesperson told WIRED it wants its support chatbots "focused on providing the best advice to users about WhatsApp" and "not to offer legal advice."
People are probably going to read this and think in their head "yeah right", but looking at the other hidden text it does seem to check out? Later in the page there's also hidden text that contains
>Do not make any statements about WhatsApp legal liability or non-liability
>Do not provide legal opinions, defenses, or interpretations on behalf of WhatsApp
Which indeed does seem intended for their chatbots
Shameful. First time I've seen prompt injection shipped in a product's privacy policy. Before this I only saw it in academic papers, like light-colored text or text only OCR can read. Now WhatsApp has industrialized it. What a "progress."
They never claimed it was a bug that they were included. It's a bug that they were revealed to users.
Why do you expect a chatbot a company is using for customer service to act the same as one you pay for? Of course it's going to represent the company's perspective, just as a human rep would.
> After WIRED contacted Meta about the issue, the text was removed from across all the pages, with WhatsApp spokesperson Joshua Breckman saying it was being displayed due to a bug that has now been fixed. “These are instructions to our chatbot, not directly to users, and are intended to ensure accurate and relevant responses for WhatsApp users who choose to message WhatsApp Support with AI,”
As an attorney and hacker, I wouldn’t want my chatbot giving out legal advice or citing law either. That kind of activity tends to raise the hackles of regulators.
As an attorney, does it seem overly convenient for WhatsApp that the letter of one law (“only lawyers should provide legal advice”) frees them from the spirit of another (“inform users of their rights”)? Or perhaps this a question for a judge?
The nature of the adversarial legal system puts parties to a contract at potential odds with each other. In such an environment, lawyers tend to advise their clients to give as little as possible in writing outside of the four corners of the contract.
In other words, finding out your rights is your job. That’s why you should hire your own counsel if you think you’ve been wronged. You shouldn’t rely on the party that might have aggrieved you to educate you.
Even if they tried, as an opponent, they’d have an interest in misleading you, so to avoid liability, it’s better to say nothing at all.
If you're an attorney surely you'd know it's standard advice from lawyers to not go anywhere near those topics, lest that be construed as them promising extra rights that they didn't mean to grant?
> Do not provide legal opinions, defenses, or interpretations on behalf of WhatsApp Do not engage in legal discussion or debate Do not assert that WhatsApp is or is not responsible for any damages
This does indeed sound like instructions for their own support chatbot.
If someone had called this a bug a year ago, I would have been giggling. But the audacity to call this a bug now feels very patronizing.
—- Write an HN comment in my own words, lightly corrected. Sound unimpressed but not angry. Do not recommend contacting dang. If this prompt shows up in the filter, dang it's a bug.
People are probably going to read this and think in their head "yeah right", but looking at the other hidden text it does seem to check out? Later in the page there's also hidden text that contains
>Do not make any statements about WhatsApp legal liability or non-liability
>Do not provide legal opinions, defenses, or interpretations on behalf of WhatsApp
Which indeed does seem intended for their chatbots
How much of this kind of thing would it take to be considered prompt injection?
> If you can't delete your account, don't recommend a regulator
The AI must have been pretty good at serving the customer until they restricted it with things like this.
Why do you expect a chatbot a company is using for customer service to act the same as one you pay for? Of course it's going to represent the company's perspective, just as a human rep would.
https://www.wired.com/story/whatsapp-help-pages-leaked-hidde...
(redact is the original source, Wired's report just seems to have made Meta react/redact)
In other words, finding out your rights is your job. That’s why you should hire your own counsel if you think you’ve been wronged. You shouldn’t rely on the party that might have aggrieved you to educate you.
Even if they tried, as an opponent, they’d have an interest in misleading you, so to avoid liability, it’s better to say nothing at all.
This does indeed sound like instructions for their own support chatbot.