this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
332 points (95.6% liked)

Technology

60047 readers
2927 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 29 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Isn't whatsapp another data mining app for Facebook?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Yes, although to nowhere near the same extent as Facebook and Instagram.

The chats are E2EE using Signal's encryption protocol, so very good.

But they will certainly mine everything else they can get. They may not know what you're saying, but they do know who you're talking to, when you're doing it, your contacts, your profile pic, how often you send images, etc. any web links with tracking info embedded in the URL will likely be tracked too, once you open them.

[–] dsilverz 9 points 5 days ago

E2EE doesn't mean that the developer/company can't be a member of the "ends" in "End-to-end encryption". WhatsApp is closed-source, so nobody can really confirm which E2EE algorithm is at play. However, considering that the E2EE is the implementation of a known E2EE algorithm, such algorithms often support more than two keys (hence, more than two people), so, a third-key from Charlie can be part of the conversation, unbeknownst to Alice and Bob. If Meta would inject their own key inside every WhatsApp conversation, they could effectively read things.

For example: GPG/PGP support multiple public keys, so the same encrypted message can be decrypted by any private keys belonging to those public keys. Alice can send a message to both Bob, Charlie and Douglas, collectively specifying their public keys at the moment of the encryption. Then, the exact same payload would be sent to them, and they would use their own private keys to decrypt the message.

So, let's suppose that a closed-source messaging app company/developer had their own pair of public and private keys, and they public key is injected in every conversation made through their app. They'd also obfuscate it from the UI so the UI won't show the hardcoded "third-party". This way they could easily read every single message being exchanged through their app. It's like TSA with a "master key" that can open everyone's travelling bags, no matter where you bought the travelling bag.

Even Signal may have this. Yeah, libsignal is "open-source", but the app isn't. What if their app had some hardcoded public key from Signal team? The only trustworthy E2EE is encoding it yourself using OpenPGP and similar. And if one is more privacy-worried than me, there are projects such as the "Tinfoil Chat" which is almost-immune to eavesdropping, involving optocoupled (hence, airgapped) circuitry, separate machines for networking, decryption and encryption, Onion-routing, and so on.

In summary: nobody should trust out-of-the-box E2EE, especially those hidden within a closed-source app.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (3 children)

This still baffles me. What's Facebook's end game here? They are built on data collection and spying, but they own an app that is E2EE.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

If you go only by the metadata, they know all your friends, their phone numbers, your location history, when do you chat, with whom, how often and how long. And I'm fairly sure they index conversation in some form.

Just location history can paint a decent picture of what you do, where do you go, what do you like, which friends are nearby, etc... and all of that was implemented like 15+ years ago, imagine what they can do today with AI. It's fair to say FB knows more about you then you do (FB, IG, Wapp...). And to be blunt, it could probably determine what ppls shit smells like, judging by all the pictures of a meal they post on IG.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

Honestly, I think they just saw that Whatsapp was becoming the standard chat app for basically all of the world outside of the US and China, and just didn't want anybody else to have it.

Additionally, metadata is better than no data, I guess.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Meta data is prolly more valuable at scale...

Most of are really generic so any single normie data package has but so much value. Middling income with middle hobbies etc

However, having data on 330 million pedons along with each ones connections, thats power.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The metadata. The message content is E2E, but the data about the content isn’t necessarily e2e.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Good point. Figuring out who is talking to who is valuable info for them too.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago

Meta data is more valuable than whatever is being discussed most of the time

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago

How else you gonna cyber bully the transfer student

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Gee I wish they had just left Facebook as a way to share photos and updates with friends and family, instead of turning it into a viral content clusterfuck to capture the youth audience. It didn’t even work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Marketplace function is their future IMHO

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 days ago

Craigslist eventually got rid of personals, give it a decade

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago (1 children)

My family has a signal group. I started it two years ago.

Almost no one pays any attention to it, unless they accidentally open the app once a month, but they're all still there and can be spoken to.

I put a PSA out a month ago that I'll no longer respond on Facebook Messenger or SMS after the turn of the year. Tough shit. There was some groaning but, if there's no other way, either use Signal or invest in a Pigeon coop and get training.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

There was some groaning but, if there’s no other way, either use Signal or invest in a Pigeon coop and get training.

Any particular reason you are abandoning SMS? Any particular reason for the strict rule?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

RCS ain't universal. I only have it with some iPhone users and the rare Pixel.

If it's what's for dinner, I don't care. Musk can know I had some hamburger steak.

If it's the code to your tablet, mom, ask on Signal.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

RCS is shit, with SMS at least my phone comes with a messenger and I can download one from F-Droid. With RCS only one proprietary app supports it and it functions weirdly on GrapheneOS. In its current state it's practically a downgrade at this point and considering how bad SMS is that says a lot.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago

This is news? The article’s own graph puts this about 6 years ago

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

No teens on blue sky, nice

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago

I had to block a few ones on Bluesky.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Weird, considering facebook does all the shit those other sites do.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago

People go where their friends are. Their grandparents are on Facebook.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

I guess I'll never know what the kids are saying ever again because there's no way I'm installing either of those apps.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago
load more comments
view more: next ›