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I'm German and (as stereotypes would have it) extremely privacy conscious. Having lived in the US for over a decade I've reluctantly come to terms with the less
by verst 10y ago
I'm German and (as stereotypes would have it) extremely privacy conscious. Having lived in the US for over a decade I've reluctantly come to terms with the lesser privacy standards here.
For a long time I refused to keep a lot of information on Facebook as Facebook seemed to only consider privacy as an afterthought after users expressed outrage (I appreciate transparency about the use of data so I can make my own decision). I refused to use the sign-in with Facebook functionality as I had no interest in giving third parties access to my FB data. Eventually I just gave up and now use Facebook sign-in everywhere because it simply is much more convenient.
When I traveled to China a year ago the utility of using WeChat or Baidu Maps was simply too great. I was well aware that using these applications almost certainly would surrender information to the Chinese government. Interestingly enough, because I assumed that this would happen one way or another during my 3 months stay I felt more inclined to use these applications.
WeChat is the only viable way to keep in touch with all of my Chinese friends in China and in the US.
- idra 10y agoNo it's not. There's Whatsapp for starters, which isn't blocked in China. There's always email. If your Chinese friends are ignorant about privacy, it doesn't mean you need to sacrifice yours. > the utility of using WeChat or Baidu Maps was simply too great "Give me convenience or give me death"
- iklos55 10y agoThis is amazing - you're saying that Wechat has privacy issues but advertise Whatsapp.
- idra 10y agoI knew this would come up, but Whatsapp is still miles ahead of Wechat regarding privacy. And especially regarding invasions of privacy where the Chinese government is involved, which I am pretty sure Whatsapp is safe from. First, Whatsapp advertises to have end-to-end encryption, which Wechat doesn't have. Second, your private Wechat conversations can be used against you as evidence in court, while any evidence collected with NSA tools cannot, since it is technically illegal. If you want privacy from the US government, then you probably shouldn't use Whatsapp. In any other situation it is vastly superior.
- FabHK 10y agoI wish everyone would just install Signal and Wire - it's not that hard :-/
- kuschku 10y agoSignal is not intended to protect from government surveillance, nor is it able to.
- robgough 10y agoI thought that was exactly the point? Who is it intended to protect you from?
- kuschku 10y agoThere’s a few levels of protection that you might want from a chat system. #1 Protection from a dumb attacker doing MitM: This is done by anything that uses HTTPS. #2 Protection from an attacker that can get fake SSL certs: This is done by anything using certificate pinning. #3 Protection from an attacker that controls the app store: This can’t be easily done by Signal – and they don’t do it. #4 Protection from an attacker that can take over the servers running the application: This is NOT done by Signal, and is hard to achieve (even with true E2E, unless you do multicast, you usually can extract metadata here, although there are chat applications protecting against it). If your enemy is the US government, you’re automatically EOL, due to #4. If your enemy is another government, you’re likely EOL, due to #3, unless you actually build the app from source yourself. This is not a fault from Signal – nor can they easily fix it – but it’s a realistic problem.
- FabHK 10y agoWith Signal, you can verify fingerprints. So, what you're saying is: #4 if some agency "takes over" the Signal servers, they can extract metadata. But only that? #3 if the binary is not what its supposed to be, then, yes, all bets are off. That's a whole other can of worms, but a) is there any evidence that's ever happened? and b) that much affects any smartphone chat app, so does not help you to decide between Signal and WeChat.
- battlebot 10y agoConvenience is how they get to you. Just say no to convenience.