Comment by bruce343434
15 days ago
Never heard of this before. Why would I use this? I am assuming the messages are not actually encrypted, because on their own privacy page they state that they "process" messages and attachments sent through birdychat. So are they processing the raw unencrypted data on their servers or what?
From a cursory glance of their CSAE policy, combined with the above, it seems they would be very eager to comply with the dreaded "chat control".
It is very possible that they process messages in the client app, before sending them.
WhatsApp does the same: have you noticed how the photos you receive have a debatable quality? Presumably (and hopefully) the sender's app downscaled them before e2e encryption.
From this it seems that whatsapp interop requires you to pass a url of the media, not the actual encrypted media. Aside from TLS, I'm not sure what encryption you get for attachments
https://engineering.fb.com/2024/03/06/security/whatsapp-mess...
You just need to enable "HD videos & photos" option in the WhatsApp settings and then the pictures and movies sent via the app have a much higher quality.
On the main page it states clearly that messages are e2e encrypted. So all they can collect is metadata.