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I love this post for the in-depth explanation of the UX challenges around e2e encryption and why they made the decisions they did. It's educational. I think Mo

by kentonv 10y ago

I love this post for the in-depth explanation of the UX challenges around e2e encryption and why they made the decisions they did. It's educational. I think Moxie highlights a very good point that is commonly underrated among "security Dunning-Krugers": Opening yourself to the possibility of an attack is often OK if the attack is easily detectable, and if the identity of the attacker would be obvious upon detection. Yes, Facebook could intercept and decrypt a message without your advance knowledge. However, you would be able to detect it after the fact. And if you detected an attack, the attacker could be no one other than Facebook. You could then expose them and ruin their reputation. Given this, it's unlikely that Facebook would risk carrying out such an attack in the first place. Security is not binary, it's risk management. The goal is to minimize the risk of an attack, not to rule it out entirely (hint: you can't). I think WhatsApp has made the right choices here.

yellowapple 10y ago
In most cases, I'd much rather disallow Facebook from MITMing my messages than try to "ruin their reputation" (hint: I won't, because Facebook already does far worse things on a regular basis without so much as an eye-bat from the world). In other words: I care about the confidentiality of my messages far more than the promise of some sort of dubious ability to shame Facebook for simply fulfilling its business model. Sure, there are some cases where allowing security to be exploited in one area protects the security of another, but those are called "honeypots", and I sure as hell hope my private communications are not a part of that. Transparency is a dependency of trust. WhatsApp is not transparent; therefore, it is not trustworthy. Simple as that.
- artefacts 10y ago
  > Transparency is a dependency of trust. WhatsApp is not transparent; therefore, it is not trustworthy. Simple as that. +1. The CEO calls its users "Dumb Fucks"; the sister of the CEO, formerly a director of Facebook, claimed "Privacy needs to go away". There's no transparency with WhatsApp in terms of its implementation, so the fact that Moxie may have helped them get initially set up is moot. Moxie's reputation doesn't provide any provable assurances of confidentiality from Facebook.

by kentonv 10y ago

yellowapple 10y ago

In most cases, I'd much rather disallow Facebook from MITMing my messages than try to "ruin their reputation" (hint: I won't, because Facebook already does far worse things on a regular basis without so much as an eye-bat from the world). In other words: I care about the confidentiality of my messages far more than the promise of some sort of dubious ability to shame Facebook for simply fulfilling its business model. Sure, there are some cases where allowing security to be exploited in one area protects the security of another, but those are called "honeypots", and I sure as hell hope my private communications are not a part of that. Transparency is a dependency of trust. WhatsApp is not transparent; therefore, it is not trustworthy. Simple as that.

artefacts 10y ago
> Transparency is a dependency of trust. WhatsApp is not transparent; therefore, it is not trustworthy. Simple as that. +1. The CEO calls its users "Dumb Fucks"; the sister of the CEO, formerly a director of Facebook, claimed "Privacy needs to go away". There's no transparency with WhatsApp in terms of its implementation, so the fact that Moxie may have helped them get initially set up is moot. Moxie's reputation doesn't provide any provable assurances of confidentiality from Facebook.