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friendly reminder, whatsapp is not end-to-end encrypted. WhatsApp and iMessage are vulnerable to law-enforcement real-time searches. WhatsApp shares message

friendly reminder, whatsapp is not end-to-end encrypted. WhatsApp and iMessage are vulnerable to law-enforcement real-time searches. WhatsApp shares message metadata with law enforcement agencies such as the Department of Justice. If legally required, or at its own discretion (such as for investigating Facebook leaks), it can provide critical location or account information, or real-time data on the recipients messaged a target subject. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp#FBI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp#FBI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reception_and_criticism_of_WhatsApp_security_and_privacy_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reception_and_criticism_of_Wha... you should use Signal.

po1nter 4y ago
> whatsapp is not end-to-end encrypted. Didn't they work with the Signal team for their e2e encryption of messages and calls? Are you saying that they've removed that despite showing the opposite at the beginning of of every new conversation?
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-encrypted-messages-arent-that-private-after-all/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-... https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/whatsapp-imessage-facebook-apple-fbi-privacy-1261816/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/what... It’s whitewashed surveillance via automated loopholes
  - morsch 4y ago
    Neither of those says that anybody other than sender and recipient can access message contents. Just metadata, which is well understood (and from what I know, also true for Signal, correct me if I'm wrong).
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      If you keep reading it says that there are automated flagging operations which enable third actor surveillance
      - morsch 4y ago
        Where does it say that? It says they could do that, not that they are doing it. Although nothing indicates that Facebook currently collects user messages without manual intervention by the recipient, it's worth pointing out that there is no technical reason it could not do so. [...] An "end-to-end" encrypted messaging platform could choose to, for example, perform automated AI-based content scanning of all messages on a device, then forward automatically flagged messages to the platform's cloud for further action.
        wahnfrieden 4y ago
        that's what I said, "enable"
    - abdullahkhalids 4y ago
      In response to a subpoena, Signal foundation provided law enforcement with the date of account creation and last date of access. https://signal.org/bigbrother/central-california-grand-jury/ https://signal.org/bigbrother/central-california-grand-jury/ The subpoena asks for "all correspondence with [these] users". I am not a lawyer, so I don't know if that gave enough wiggle room for Signal to not provide metadata, or if they don't store it in the first place.
- earthscienceman 4y ago
  The nuance here lies in what a "message" is. In the contemporary era of smartphones, data transmission, and all the bits-and-bobs in between, a message is much more than just the word contents. The "messages" might be e2e encrypted but the metadata is not, and that subtle difference is ridiculously important. e2e encryption is used as an indicator that your communication is private, but while the messages on whatsapp may be private (well, until your partner in the discussion decides to send a copy to meta themselves), the communication is anything but. For some reason though this nuance is set to the side and we all bicker about the message contents. The reality is, sending information is a multi-layered thing. There's the message contents, the message metadata, and the network that the message is sent on. All of which are subjected to different levels of privacy. Each of those things can be used to spy on you, to abuse your rights, and to generally invade your life in ways that most would consider to be inappropriate. Which leads to the obvious conclusion that e2e encryption of the messages is only a portion of the issue. By using WhatsApp, you're trusting Meta corp as arbiter of all of these pieces and their implementations. Which is obviously, given everything the Zuck has ever leaked from his mouth piece, is not a great choice.
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    Whatsapp has automated loopholes for revealing full message contents not only metadata
    - earthscienceman 4y ago
      I know this, you know this, and it's abhorrent. I wanted to skip over that detail and point at the more glaring issues with trusting them in general. The real point is that trusting Meta to be a good moderator of your communication and all the ways that can be misused is really absurd. Emphasized by your point that they can automagically escape their encryption routines on a whim.
      - lxgr 4y ago
        > I know this, you know this Mind enlightening the rest of us?
criddell 4y ago
If you click through the references in your links a couple of times, you eventually find this[1]: > The other tech giant that can be compelled by law enforcement to hand over potentially large amounts of sensitive messaging data is Apple. iMessage, Apple’s text-message service, comes loaded on the iPhone and is used by 1.3 billion people worldwide. According to the FBI’s “Lawful Access” guide, if served with a court order or a search warrant, Apple must hand over basic subscriber information as well as 25 days’ worth of data about queries made in iMessage, such as what a targeted user looked up in iMessage and also which other people searched for that targeted user in the app. That doesn’t include actual message content or whether messages were exchanged between different users. That doesn't sound like the police have real time access to Apple Messages at all. I believe they still have access to unencrypted backups, which is not real-time. [1]: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/whatsapp-imessage-facebook-apple-fbi-privacy-1261816/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/what...
jdlyga 4y ago
I never expected WhatsApp to be private at all. It's a Meta product, even if they claim otherwise.
standardUser 4y ago
WhatsApp says they are encrypted. Some reading tells me there is a loophole if a message is flagged - it's then sent for moderation and no longer encrypted. A hell of a loophole. But loopholes aside, WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted and, without being flagged, messages are not vulnerable to real-time searches by law enforcement. If I'm wrong (very possible!) please explain exactly what I have wrong here. As for Signal, I have an account and use it with a few people. But until the day comes when my other several hundred contacts switch to Signal, I don't have much of an option.
- kornhole 4y ago
  The content of the message is E2EE except when it is not with the loophole you mentioned. The major difference between Whatsapp and Signal is the metadata collection. Meta can record each message sender, receiver, time, size of message, length, device ID in some cases, location and more. This is valuable information for the authorities. Signal encrypts metadata and knows the first time a number connected to the service and last time they connected and have consistently only been able to provide that when given a warrant.
- pixel_tracing 4y ago
  I mean you can be end to end encrypted but still have master keys server side
- fsociety 4y ago
  This is correct. Message content is encrypted, and only readable from either an unencrypted backup on iCloud or if one of the message recipients reports your message (their client then sends the message to Meta unencrypted). Message metadata is available to Meta. All I can say is.. if your threat model has to account for metadata like this than you have a whole lot more to account for than just WhatsApp or Signal.
FalconSensei 4y ago
SMS is also not end-to-end encrypted. At least in Brazil, the reason why people use whatsapp is because sms is expensive (and they use audio messages also)
Markoff 4y ago
stop spreading lies, whatsapp IS end-to-end encrypted, yes they can see metadata but messages are E2EE some other people mention flaggging when sender or recipient send message for moderation, which has absolutely nothing to do with encryption or safety, obviously if YOU have access to message then you can forward it to whoever you want
- reitanqild 4y ago
  Messages are usually sent E2E-encrypted it seems, but based on some heuristics (my guess: interesting contents as determined by filters, flagged, user flagged by law enforcement) messages are sent via a side channel to Meta. Sounds as legit as when Facebook asked people to upload nudes of themselves so they would know what to block :-$
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    >messages are sent via a side channel to Meta. absolute and utter nonsense. WhatsApp literally uses Signal's encryption protocol and messages leave your device encrypted. The only thing WhatsApp has access to is metadata. if you're going to make an accusation like this I suggest you back it up.
    - reitanqild 4y ago
      It is discussed widely and openly including in sibling threads. I also think it was in the news a few months back and I even think it was discussed here. Edit: note, I am not saying messages aren’t always sent E2E-encrypted between users today, only that in some cases they are also sent in a side channel to Facebook simultaneously. Edit 2: You can try this search: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=does+whatsapp+sometimes+send+messages+to+facebook+for+moderation&t=fpas&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=does+whatsapp+sometimes+send+messa... Or read this article: https://nypost.com/2021/09/07/facebook-reads-and-shares-whatsapp-private-messages-report/ https://nypost.com/2021/09/07/facebook-reads-and-shares-what... Edit 3: this is of course on top of the fact that they uploaded the backups (from everyone who enabled backups) unencrypted to Google under terms that let Google sift through it.
jeroenhd 4y ago
Signal is incredibly user-hostile, especially for a supposedly open source company. I don't know what alternative to recommend, but the decision is not so easy. As someone whose threat model does not yet involve law enforcement, I'll stick to my own preferred platforms, thank you very much.
- laurex 4y ago
  What makes it "user-hostile"?
- gwill 4y ago
  would you mind expanding on how Signal is user hostile? the only things I know of is dropping sms support on android, which didn't affect me, and the "enable notifications" message that pops up every week.
  - ajvs 4y ago
    Like Discord they say that 3rd-party clients are against their Terms and Conditions.
theCrowing 4y ago
If the Twitter acquisition and the published whatsapp chats between musk and dozens of other billionaires/politicians/ceos and public figures showed me anything. Is that random people on hackernews and reddit take their communication way more serious than them. I don't know what your communication consists of but I need to activate e2e maybe 1-2 times a year. Don't get me wrong I get that making encryption the standard should be the way to go but comments like these are irrelevant for 99% of people and if you have the need for real secure communication you would host it yourself. It's the same for email 99% don't need PGP and if you really do you shouldn't use email in the first place.
- palata 4y ago
  There are the people who don't want a specific message to leak (politicians, journalists), and then there is the whole surveillance capitalism story. We need e2ee so that companies cannot profile entire populations using the content of their messages (they can still do a lot with metadata, admittedly).
- palata 4y ago
  This reasoning is the reason why better alternatives struggle. "I get that it would be better, but I don't care so I won't use the better alternatives".
  - theCrowing 4y ago
    more private ≠ better
    - palata 4y ago
      "Don't get me wrong I get that making encryption the standard should be the way to go" That did sound like saying "it would be better to make encryption the standard", didn't it?
xerxesaa 4y ago
Message contents are end-to-end encrypted (but not all metadata is). And no, they are not sent through an unencrypted side channel to Meta. I've worked at Meta on a team that does end-to-end encryption. The company is also very clear about this publicly [1][2] It's super frustrating that every single time WhatsApp is mentioned on Hacker News, someone boldly makes a claim that it's not encrypted based on hearsay or hunches. 1- https://faq.whatsapp.com/791574747982248/?locale=en_US https://faq.whatsapp.com/791574747982248/?locale=en_US 2 - https://www.whatsapp.com/privacy https://www.whatsapp.com/privacy
- est31 4y ago
  It's fair to criticize the end to end encrypted claim though because for a long time, WhatsApp was storing unencrypted backups. Now that has been improved, but I doubt that most people opt into that. If 10% of users has turned off backups, and 5% has put a password on their backups, you have 85% of people being vulnerable. If some authority wants to know what has been discussed on WhatsApp, they won't ask Meta, they will ask Google or Apple. With the above (imaginary) numbers, if there is a group with 5 random Signal users and a group with 5 random WhatsApp users, the WhatsApp content is going to be available most likely to authorities that Google and Apple deliver content to, while the content of the Signal group is most likely not available. For iCloud, Apple claims end to end encryption but they keep a backup key around so it's mostly just marketing. There might be a small benefit from this through protection from employees side stepping company policies.
  - xerxesaa 4y ago
    Sure, that's a fair point. Backups were initially not encrypted, but as you mentioned, this option is now available. Without going into too much detail, I can tell you a huge challenge with encrypted backups is compliance - many people simply do not opt-in to using encrypted backups. It's a difficult line to walk because ultimately you don't want to pester users too much about using encrypted backups either. In case it's not clear, the reason it requires opt-in is because you (i.e., the user) control the encryption keys and therefore you must take some action to write down a key or passphrase. As you may imagine, the average messaging app user is not as tech savvy as the average Hacker News user and many simply don't want to go through this extra step. Even worse, if they opt-in to encrypted backups and lose their keys, they will end up blaming Meta for not giving them a way to restore their message history when their phone gets lost (it's not easy to explain that it's your responsibility as the user to keep your keys safely stored).
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

po1nter 4y ago

> whatsapp is not end-to-end encrypted. Didn't they work with the Signal team for their e2e encryption of messages and calls? Are you saying that they've removed that despite showing the opposite at the beginning of of every new conversation?

wahnfrieden 4y ago
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-encrypted-messages-arent-that-private-after-all/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/whatsapp-end-to-end-... https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/whatsapp-imessage-facebook-apple-fbi-privacy-1261816/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/what... It’s whitewashed surveillance via automated loopholes
- morsch 4y ago
  Neither of those says that anybody other than sender and recipient can access message contents. Just metadata, which is well understood (and from what I know, also true for Signal, correct me if I'm wrong).
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    If you keep reading it says that there are automated flagging operations which enable third actor surveillance
    - morsch 4y ago
      Where does it say that? It says they could do that, not that they are doing it. Although nothing indicates that Facebook currently collects user messages without manual intervention by the recipient, it's worth pointing out that there is no technical reason it could not do so. [...] An "end-to-end" encrypted messaging platform could choose to, for example, perform automated AI-based content scanning of all messages on a device, then forward automatically flagged messages to the platform's cloud for further action.
      - wahnfrieden 4y ago
        that's what I said, "enable"
  - abdullahkhalids 4y ago
    In response to a subpoena, Signal foundation provided law enforcement with the date of account creation and last date of access. https://signal.org/bigbrother/central-california-grand-jury/ https://signal.org/bigbrother/central-california-grand-jury/ The subpoena asks for "all correspondence with [these] users". I am not a lawyer, so I don't know if that gave enough wiggle room for Signal to not provide metadata, or if they don't store it in the first place.
earthscienceman 4y ago
The nuance here lies in what a "message" is. In the contemporary era of smartphones, data transmission, and all the bits-and-bobs in between, a message is much more than just the word contents. The "messages" might be e2e encrypted but the metadata is not, and that subtle difference is ridiculously important. e2e encryption is used as an indicator that your communication is private, but while the messages on whatsapp may be private (well, until your partner in the discussion decides to send a copy to meta themselves), the communication is anything but. For some reason though this nuance is set to the side and we all bicker about the message contents. The reality is, sending information is a multi-layered thing. There's the message contents, the message metadata, and the network that the message is sent on. All of which are subjected to different levels of privacy. Each of those things can be used to spy on you, to abuse your rights, and to generally invade your life in ways that most would consider to be inappropriate. Which leads to the obvious conclusion that e2e encryption of the messages is only a portion of the issue. By using WhatsApp, you're trusting Meta corp as arbiter of all of these pieces and their implementations. Which is obviously, given everything the Zuck has ever leaked from his mouth piece, is not a great choice.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  Whatsapp has automated loopholes for revealing full message contents not only metadata
  - earthscienceman 4y ago
    I know this, you know this, and it's abhorrent. I wanted to skip over that detail and point at the more glaring issues with trusting them in general. The real point is that trusting Meta to be a good moderator of your communication and all the ways that can be misused is really absurd. Emphasized by your point that they can automagically escape their encryption routines on a whim.
    - lxgr 4y ago
      > I know this, you know this Mind enlightening the rest of us?

criddell 4y ago

If you click through the references in your links a couple of times, you eventually find this[1]: > The other tech giant that can be compelled by law enforcement to hand over potentially large amounts of sensitive messaging data is Apple. iMessage, Apple’s text-message service, comes loaded on the iPhone and is used by 1.3 billion people worldwide. According to the FBI’s “Lawful Access” guide, if served with a court order or a search warrant, Apple must hand over basic subscriber information as well as 25 days’ worth of data about queries made in iMessage, such as what a targeted user looked up in iMessage and also which other people searched for that targeted user in the app. That doesn’t include actual message content or whether messages were exchanged between different users. That doesn't sound like the police have real time access to Apple Messages at all. I believe they still have access to unencrypted backups, which is not real-time. [1]: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/whatsapp-imessage-facebook-apple-fbi-privacy-1261816/ https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/what...

jdlyga 4y ago

I never expected WhatsApp to be private at all. It's a Meta product, even if they claim otherwise.

standardUser 4y ago

WhatsApp says they are encrypted. Some reading tells me there is a loophole if a message is flagged - it's then sent for moderation and no longer encrypted. A hell of a loophole. But loopholes aside, WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted and, without being flagged, messages are not vulnerable to real-time searches by law enforcement. If I'm wrong (very possible!) please explain exactly what I have wrong here. As for Signal, I have an account and use it with a few people. But until the day comes when my other several hundred contacts switch to Signal, I don't have much of an option.

kornhole 4y ago
The content of the message is E2EE except when it is not with the loophole you mentioned. The major difference between Whatsapp and Signal is the metadata collection. Meta can record each message sender, receiver, time, size of message, length, device ID in some cases, location and more. This is valuable information for the authorities. Signal encrypts metadata and knows the first time a number connected to the service and last time they connected and have consistently only been able to provide that when given a warrant.
pixel_tracing 4y ago
I mean you can be end to end encrypted but still have master keys server side
fsociety 4y ago
This is correct. Message content is encrypted, and only readable from either an unencrypted backup on iCloud or if one of the message recipients reports your message (their client then sends the message to Meta unencrypted). Message metadata is available to Meta. All I can say is.. if your threat model has to account for metadata like this than you have a whole lot more to account for than just WhatsApp or Signal.

FalconSensei 4y ago

SMS is also not end-to-end encrypted. At least in Brazil, the reason why people use whatsapp is because sms is expensive (and they use audio messages also)

Markoff 4y ago

stop spreading lies, whatsapp IS end-to-end encrypted, yes they can see metadata but messages are E2EE some other people mention flaggging when sender or recipient send message for moderation, which has absolutely nothing to do with encryption or safety, obviously if YOU have access to message then you can forward it to whoever you want

reitanqild 4y ago
Messages are usually sent E2E-encrypted it seems, but based on some heuristics (my guess: interesting contents as determined by filters, flagged, user flagged by law enforcement) messages are sent via a side channel to Meta. Sounds as legit as when Facebook asked people to upload nudes of themselves so they would know what to block :-$
- Barrin92 4y ago
  >messages are sent via a side channel to Meta. absolute and utter nonsense. WhatsApp literally uses Signal's encryption protocol and messages leave your device encrypted. The only thing WhatsApp has access to is metadata. if you're going to make an accusation like this I suggest you back it up.
  - reitanqild 4y ago
    It is discussed widely and openly including in sibling threads. I also think it was in the news a few months back and I even think it was discussed here. Edit: note, I am not saying messages aren’t always sent E2E-encrypted between users today, only that in some cases they are also sent in a side channel to Facebook simultaneously. Edit 2: You can try this search: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=does+whatsapp+sometimes+send+messages+to+facebook+for+moderation&t=fpas&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=does+whatsapp+sometimes+send+messa... Or read this article: https://nypost.com/2021/09/07/facebook-reads-and-shares-whatsapp-private-messages-report/ https://nypost.com/2021/09/07/facebook-reads-and-shares-what... Edit 3: this is of course on top of the fact that they uploaded the backups (from everyone who enabled backups) unencrypted to Google under terms that let Google sift through it.

jeroenhd 4y ago

Signal is incredibly user-hostile, especially for a supposedly open source company. I don't know what alternative to recommend, but the decision is not so easy. As someone whose threat model does not yet involve law enforcement, I'll stick to my own preferred platforms, thank you very much.

laurex 4y ago
What makes it "user-hostile"?
gwill 4y ago
would you mind expanding on how Signal is user hostile? the only things I know of is dropping sms support on android, which didn't affect me, and the "enable notifications" message that pops up every week.
- ajvs 4y ago
  Like Discord they say that 3rd-party clients are against their Terms and Conditions.

theCrowing 4y ago

If the Twitter acquisition and the published whatsapp chats between musk and dozens of other billionaires/politicians/ceos and public figures showed me anything. Is that random people on hackernews and reddit take their communication way more serious than them. I don't know what your communication consists of but I need to activate e2e maybe 1-2 times a year. Don't get me wrong I get that making encryption the standard should be the way to go but comments like these are irrelevant for 99% of people and if you have the need for real secure communication you would host it yourself. It's the same for email 99% don't need PGP and if you really do you shouldn't use email in the first place.

palata 4y ago
There are the people who don't want a specific message to leak (politicians, journalists), and then there is the whole surveillance capitalism story. We need e2ee so that companies cannot profile entire populations using the content of their messages (they can still do a lot with metadata, admittedly).
palata 4y ago
This reasoning is the reason why better alternatives struggle. "I get that it would be better, but I don't care so I won't use the better alternatives".
- theCrowing 4y ago
  more private ≠ better
  - palata 4y ago
    "Don't get me wrong I get that making encryption the standard should be the way to go" That did sound like saying "it would be better to make encryption the standard", didn't it?

xerxesaa 4y ago

Message contents are end-to-end encrypted (but not all metadata is). And no, they are not sent through an unencrypted side channel to Meta. I've worked at Meta on a team that does end-to-end encryption. The company is also very clear about this publicly [1][2] It's super frustrating that every single time WhatsApp is mentioned on Hacker News, someone boldly makes a claim that it's not encrypted based on hearsay or hunches. 1- https://faq.whatsapp.com/791574747982248/?locale=en_US https://faq.whatsapp.com/791574747982248/?locale=en_US 2 - https://www.whatsapp.com/privacy https://www.whatsapp.com/privacy

est31 4y ago
It's fair to criticize the end to end encrypted claim though because for a long time, WhatsApp was storing unencrypted backups. Now that has been improved, but I doubt that most people opt into that. If 10% of users has turned off backups, and 5% has put a password on their backups, you have 85% of people being vulnerable. If some authority wants to know what has been discussed on WhatsApp, they won't ask Meta, they will ask Google or Apple. With the above (imaginary) numbers, if there is a group with 5 random Signal users and a group with 5 random WhatsApp users, the WhatsApp content is going to be available most likely to authorities that Google and Apple deliver content to, while the content of the Signal group is most likely not available. For iCloud, Apple claims end to end encryption but they keep a backup key around so it's mostly just marketing. There might be a small benefit from this through protection from employees side stepping company policies.
- xerxesaa 4y ago
  Sure, that's a fair point. Backups were initially not encrypted, but as you mentioned, this option is now available. Without going into too much detail, I can tell you a huge challenge with encrypted backups is compliance - many people simply do not opt-in to using encrypted backups. It's a difficult line to walk because ultimately you don't want to pester users too much about using encrypted backups either. In case it's not clear, the reason it requires opt-in is because you (i.e., the user) control the encryption keys and therefore you must take some action to write down a key or passphrase. As you may imagine, the average messaging app user is not as tech savvy as the average Hacker News user and many simply don't want to go through this extra step. Even worse, if they opt-in to encrypted backups and lose their keys, they will end up blaming Meta for not giving them a way to restore their message history when their phone gets lost (it's not easy to explain that it's your responsibility as the user to keep your keys safely stored).

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]