Comment by bossyTeacher
17 hours ago
> WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted,
- Meta data of your messages is not encrypted so meta can make a graph of who you talk to and when
- backups are not encrypted by default so plaintext of your private chats can be obtained
- even if you enable encryption for backups all it takes is for the other person in your private convo (or a person in a group chat) to not enable it for your messages to be available in plaintext
> - backups are not encrypted by default so plaintext of your private chats can be obtained
Yes, but importantly not by Meta themselves.
> - Meta data of your messages is not encrypted so meta can make a graph of who you talk to and when
Fair enough and worth mentioning. I'm personally fine with it.
> - even if you enable encryption for backups all it takes is for the other person in your private convo (or a person in a group chat) to not enable it for your messages to be available in plaintext
Yes, but how would you prevent that even in principle? I can't control what the people I'm messaging do with their copy of my messages. As long as there isn't unnecessary non-repudiation (e.g. by the sender cryptographically signing all outbound messages, which the Signal protocol intentionally avoids), I think this is fair as well.
I do agree that e.g. vanishing chats with a short timeout/"view only once" images should probably not be included in backups, though; last time I checked, I think they were.
> Yes, but importantly not by Meta themselves.
Don’t they save backups to Meta? Even if not, they can read whatever’s (unencrypted) on your phone if they really want to.
They currently go on iCloud on iOS and Google Drive on Android. There are rumors about a first-party backup service, which would obviously change that calculus, but nothing concrete yet.
I've read that if you give FB/IG/WA access to all files/photos, and you have GPS metadata for photos (I do, hey it's useful to know where I took a pic), it can trawl that data to see where you've been and when...
So now Android strips location info when sharing an image to an app. A filter layer between filesystem and app, to add complexity to the whole system...
WhatsApp / Meta is also on both sides of the E2EE.
Sure, but so is every security researcher in the world if they want to be, and they only need to get caught shipping exfiltration logic once.
> so is every security researcher in the world if they want to be
Most security researchers lack Meta's history:
- Testing emotional manipulation features on thousands of users non-consensually
- Adding spyware on underage users
- Intercept a rival app's traffic
- Allowing harm to teen mental health
And most importantly, most security researchers lack the money and power to fend off the legal consequences of these acts.
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