this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
175 points (96.3% liked)

Asklemmy

44151 readers
1054 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

As I see it:

Reddit - Lemmy Discord - Revolt Twitter - Mastodon Snapchat / Whatsapp - Signal ? Instagram - No replacement to my knowledge Skype / Zoom - Jitsi

etc etc

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] GrouchyLady 3 points 1 year ago (5 children)

What's the issue with WhatsApp? I thought it was great for privacy.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[–] keen1320 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

It’s still E2EE, as far as I know. Meta could always remove that feature but until they do, I’d consider it a safe and private messaging platform.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

None of the messaging metadata is encrypted. They use that metadata to build profiles of people who aren't Facebook or Instagram users that interact with Facebook and Instagram users. If you care about profiling for the sake of avoiding social engineering attacks, it's one of your worst choices. If all you care about is protecting the contents of your messages, yeah, it's pretty okay

[–] keen1320 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

No disagreement there. I could have clarified, my comment was in regard to message content only. I didn't realize that about metadata and certainly am not defending Meta. I'd prefer Signal over anything else but as others have mentioned, getting friends and family to adopt is painful.

[–] bemenaker 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lol no it's not. Meta can and WILL decrypt it. They have decrypted messages for police requests numerous times, and not necessarily under court order, just police asking. I support decryption under court order, but these weren't court ordered. Thinking anything owned by Meta is secure is ridiculous.

[–] keen1320 2 points 1 year ago

Then this is false advertising and a class-action lawsuit that should have already happened.

This Arstechnica article seems to confirm that they can't decrypt without user intervention and that they have only ever supplied metadata to law enforcement. I'm no fan of Meta but do you have sources that they have in fact decrypted actual message content at the request of law enforcement?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It's e2e from your device to server however once on the server Meta can access everything. Same as Apples e2e

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

or have a backdoor already or add one

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

It's owned by Facebook and isn't open source. There's no verifiable way to say for sure that Facebook doesn't have a master key to read everything you send on it. Compare to say, Signal, which is open source and can be verified to be secure.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It’s owned by Facebook

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It's still part of the Meta platform so not completely independent.

What information does WhatsApp share with the Meta Companies?

WhatsApp currently shares certain categories of information with Meta Companies. The information we share with the other Meta Companies includes your account registration information (such as your phone number), transaction data (for example, if you use Facebook Pay or Shops in WhatsApp), service-related information, information on how you interact with businesses when using our Services, mobile device information, your IP address, and may include other information identified in the Privacy Policy section entitled ‘Information We Collect’ or obtained upon notice to you or based on your consent.

https://faq.whatsapp.com/1303762270462331

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

the only thjng good is the messages and calls are alledgely encrypted, literally every other detail they know. live location? entire contact list? how frequently you text someone? etc etc