Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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A question about secure chats (sopuli.xyz)

submitted 11 months ago by Thisfox@sopuli.xyz to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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Two questions.

My family insist on using Whatsapp for the family chats. I have to keep a copy on a device just so I can communicate with them. I do so under protest, as I was always told it isn't secure. My brother has just said

"oh Whatsapp is encrypted, it's perfectly secure".

First, is it actually as encrypted and safe as my brother claims? That would solve everything.

Second, if it isn't, where can I get some proof that we should switch to Telegram or whatever? Proof which doesn't make me look like a raving loony?

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[–] otter@lemmy.ca 103 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (10 children)

My understanding is that it IS encrypted, and its supposed to use the Signal protocol (Signal developed it and released it for others to use)

The problems are with

metadata (like the other comment explained)
closed source, so we take their word on it for how it works. It's possible they're being misleading or doing something shady

See this image from a few years ago:

Note that signal does require this, which isn't in the chart:

phone number (for now)
last active date
sign up date (I think)

[–] pylapp@programming.dev 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Interesting! Do you remember where you got this chart?

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I think it's from here :)

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2021/01/03/whatsapp-beaten-by-apples-new-imessage-update-for-iphone-users/

Also it does leave out some info, I edited my comment up top

[–] elvith@feddit.de 1 points 11 months ago

These are just screenshots of the data privacy section from the Apple AppStore of each of the apps. Afaik those are mandatory & self reported by the devs of the app.

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