Comment on Ping! The WhatsApps that should have been an email
DomeGuy@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Most of the people I know have largely abandoned personal email. Way back before everyone had a personal number it made sense to share your email with your friends, but nowadays ‘contact that goes directly to them’ is good enough for casual purposes.
(And as understand it, WhatsApp is a cancerous fork of Signal created by Meta as a response to people abandoning their social media site for private communication or discord. Plain carrier messages for casual communication, signal for avoiding third-party interception, and social media for folk you don’t trust with your phone number.)
Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 days ago
A. WhatsApp was not created by Facebook, it was created by an independent company that got bought out after everyone started using it. (400 million users in 2013, facebook acquisition in 2014)
B. WhatsApp was created in 2009. Signal was created in 2011.
DomeGuy@lemmy.world 3 days ago
Meta using the name of a formerly independent company for their current pseudo-private messaging app does not mean said app meaningfully predates the one whose tech they use.
signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
(Please share if you have a link arguing the opposite.)
More importantly, the encryption in Whatsapp is closer to HTTPS than it is to PGP. It keeps anyone except Meta or the recipients from keeping a record of what you say, but you should absolutely assume Meta is recording what you say on WhatsApp.
(And you should also assume anyone you talk to is keeping a record as well.)
CameronDev@programming.dev 3 days ago
Whatsapp still predates signal, they just migrated the network across. And your own link confirms that.
Also, whatsapp, by your own link is e2e encrypted using the signal protocol. That does not make it “like https”. Whatsapp could snoop your messages off your device, but they cannot read them as they pass over their server.
DomeGuy@lemmy.world 3 days ago
You are assuming good behavior on the part of a corporate giant grown out of a social media site literally founded to spy on its users. A company who is literally being sued for their claims that their chat app is meaningfully encrypted
indianexpress.com/…/whatsapp-lawsuit-encrypted-me…
Even if Meta isn’t currently including themselves as a hidden participant in every WhatsApp chat, you should assume that they can do so and act as if they will do so.
Odds are pretty good that their encryption usage is good enough for any lawful behavior you may engage in, but you shouldn’t trust Meta or any software they provide with anything that would destroy your life if it was revealed.