WhatsApp assures users that no one can see their messages — but the company has an extensive monitoring operation and regularly shares personal information with prosecutors.
  • ethicallypulmonary
    2·
    3 years ago

    Well, in my opinion, it kind of does, since it doesn’t notify the user that their messages are being forwarded.

    That’s more than Signal does. This is not a typical feature; I can’t think of an end-to-end encrypted messenger that does do this. If you want to make this argument, all end-to-end-encrypted messengers must be broken because the person who receives the message can then send it to anyone else without your knowledge, or take a photo. It’s trivial.

    • Helix 🧬@feddit.de
      1·
      3 years ago

      The thing is that this can be triggered externally. It’s not the user forwarding to another user, it’s the company having a spy feature built in.

      • tomtom
        2·
        3 years ago

        well it seems like they track the unencrypted metadata and share it with law enforcement. i wouldn’t necessarily consider this breaking end to end encryption…

        there is a separate issue with the “reporting” feature where the other end can voluntarily send your (decrypted) messages to facebook for content moderation. i dont think the article claimed that decrypted messages were being automatically sent…

        • Helix 🧬@feddit.de
          1·
          3 years ago

          it seems like they track the unencrypted metadata and share it with law enforcement

          Not only that, but a machine learning algorithm “reports” messages. That’s the problem here, not the user reporting.