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The only fix to this is to replace phone numbers by secret 256 bit keys that are never reused... Never gonna happen.
by londons_explore 11mo ago
The only fix to this is to replace phone numbers by secret 256 bit keys that are never reused...
Never gonna happen.
- Sophira 11mo agoPhone numbers were never supposed to be secret. Nor were social security numbers.
- hdgvhicv 11mo agoWe used to put phone numbers and addresses in printed books and give them to everyone.
- netsharc 11mo agoI remember looking in a 1930's phone book for Zurich, and it even mentions the person's job (I guess for significant jobs like company owner)...
- ta20240528 11mo agoNorway still publishes everyone's tax returns.
- netsharc 11mo agoBut now you need to enter your own tax number to lookup other people's data, and they can see that you've been peeking. But I suppose one could start a service, so you could pay them to look up a 3rd party's tax returns...
- hsbauauvhabzb 11mo agoPhone numbers are treated as permanent even though they’re ephemeral. So here we are.
- tamimio 11mo agoThat’s not gonna happen because the whole idea is to link your real identity to the digital one, which is why you should never trust any company that refuses to give you an alternative option to the phone number.
- jojobas 11mo agoBut it's to combat spam, we swear! Because of course there is no spam in whatsapp!
- londons_explore 11mo agoSpam in WhatsApp is super low. Of 10,000 received messages, perhaps 2 are spam?
- nicce 11mo agoWhatsApp has avoided the pressure of E2EE backdoors and whatever politics because they were never needed. 1. They collect all the metadata in unencrypted format and link it to phone numbers, making a huge social graph. 2. Backups are not encrypted by default and enabling of them is pushed. So the messages were never actually encrypted for most people and police can get messages without the actual phone. 3. iCloud E2EE backup fight in UK was mostly because of 2. as people started to opt-in for encryption.
- gruez 11mo ago>3. iCloud E2EE backup fight in UK was mostly because of 2. as people started to opt-in for encryption. That doesn't make any sense. Why did uk want to start a fight over icloud E2EE backups (opt-in) but not whatsapp E2EE backups (opt-in)?
- nicce 11mo ago> That doesn't make any sense. Why did uk want to start a fight over icloud E2EE backups (opt-in) but not whatsapp E2EE backups (opt-in)? Default iCloud backup always included WhatsApp too, even if it was disabled in the app or the app used encrypted backups. And many other things, so it was not only about WhatsApp. Even for WhatsApp alone, it was slightly more useful.