Comment by RobotToaster
16 hours ago
Tiktok has direct messages, they don't even call them private.
It's better that they're honest about this, nobody should believe for a second that WhatsApp or FB messages are truly E2EE.
DM on social media shouldn't be used for anything remotely private. It's a convenience feature, nothing more.
> nobody should believe for a second that WhatsApp or FB messages are truly E2EE.
Meta still tracks analytics which isn't good for privacy, but I'm not aware of any news of them or 3rd parties reading messages without consent of one of the 1st parties? Signal is probably much better though
> Meta still tracks analytics which isn't good for privacy, but I'm not aware of any news of them or 3rd parties reading messages without consent of one of the 1st parties? Signal is probably much better though
Correct. WhatsApp uses the Signal protocol, and there is zero evidence of them reading message contents except with the consent of one of the users involved (such as a user reporting a message for moderation purposes).
(And before anyone takes issue with that last qualifier, consent from at least one party is the bar for secure communications on any platform, Signal included. If you don't trust the person you are communicating with, no amount of encryption will protect you).
Discovering a backdoor in WhatsApp for Facebook/Meta to read messages would be a career-defining finding for a security researcher, so it's not like this is some topic nobody has ever thought to investigate.
>I'm not aware of any news of them
Yet. Until they say "We delete these messages after X time and they are gone gone, and we're not reading them" Assume they are reading them, or will read them and the information just hasn't got out yet.
I mean we keep finding more and more cases where companies like FB and Google were reading messages years ago and it wasn't till now we found out.
> We delete these messages after X time
They never had the plaintext of the messages in the first place, so they don't need to delete them. That's what end-to-end encrypted means.
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> Tiktok has direct messages, they don't even call them private.
It may not be called that, but what are users expecting? Some folks may later be surprised when a warrant gets issued (e.g., from a divorce judge).
If you are a grown adult and dont do research on “messaging apps” (which Tik Tok is not) then thats really on you.
This viewpoint isn't a slippery slope, it's a runaway train.
"You moved into a neighborhood with lead pipes? That's on you, should have done more research" "Your vitamins contained undisclosed allergens? You're an adult, and it didn't say it DIDN'T contain those" "Passwords stolen because your provider stored them in plaintext? They never claimed to store them securely, so it's really on you"
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If you are a grown adult and don't do research on "<insert any topic that could have a material negative impact on your life, but that is not currently on your radar as being a topic that could have a material negative impact on your life>" then that's really on you.
Unfortunately, this doesn't scale.
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80% of the population does not and will never do that level of deep dive on apps
same discussion for any form of technology be it TVs or changing their car's oil
the deliberate app-store-ification of all things computer is also designed to keep people from asking those questions -- just download in and install, pleb.
it's why the Zoomers can't email attachments or change file types: all of the computers they grew up with were designed so they never had to understand what happens under the hood.
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Way to dunk on OP I guess but nobody is playing semantics here, it's just whether people think this is a messaging channel with one intended recipient
Honestly I'm tired with every app trying to become the everything app.
Now TikTok wants to be a messaging app. Snapchat has a short video feed just like TikTok. WhatsApp only has a text feed, how long until they also add a video feed?
Meta already has video feeds in facebook and instagram though, I imagine they wouldn’t want to detract users from those
> nobody should believe for a second that WhatsApp or FB messages are truly E2EE
That's interesting. You think all firms that audited WhatsApp and Signal protocol used by WhatsApp and all programmers who worked there for decades and can see a lie and leak if it was true are all crooks? valid opinion I guess, but I won't call it "no one should believe for a second
(curious you didn't mention Telegram, it is actually marketed as secure and e2e and it has completely gimped "secret chats" that are off by default and used by like almost nobody.)
I forget if its WhatsApp that technically lets you sync chats in unencrypted form to iCloud which is the “loophole” around this, though you can lockdown your iCloud even tighter, not sure it Apple can do much if you fully lock down your iCloud, not sure if this has been legally tested? Its not a very advertised feature its just a setting.
WhatsApp iPhone syncs to iCloud unencrypted by default[1].
iMessage also syncs to iCloud unencrypted by default[2].
[1] Depends on you paying for iCloud storage, so that you have space for a full phone backup to occur.
[2] Might be "free" with "iMessage in iCloud", an option to enable separately.
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iCloud backups are encrypted, and can be end-to-end encrypted.
Also, backups have nothing to do with the messages being end-to-end encrypted. Like if you don't use a passcode on the phone, the messages are still encrypted.
The Android version syncs all your chat logs to Google Drive without encryption by default. That's the backdoor.
Right now it got a switch to enable e2e for backups, but yeah I think default backup is probably a workaround...
I'll believe it when it's FOSS
You mean you will read all code with dependencies and compile it yourself to make sure?;) good for you. but good luck creating a popular e2e messenger then.