If they can, then it was never e2e encrypted.
Comment on Instagram quietly drops end-to-end encrypted chats
crazyinferno@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Does anyone know if they’re unencrypting chats that already happened? Like my chat history? If so that’s fucked up
ripcord@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Strive7307@discuss.tchncs.de 5 days ago
Well e2e encryption is never private for the entity contrilling the endpoint. Instagram could push an update which decrypts and uploads your past chat history. Of course they’d only do it for your benefit so you don’t lose any data /s
matlag@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
They could always do that, and basically anything you can read on your phone, they can access if they need.
Encryption is a math thing: generate a pair of keys: one te encde, one to decode. I broadcast the one to encode (“public key”), and the whole world is tu use it to send me encrypted messages. I keep the decoding (“private key”) only for myself.
In client to erver encryption, we exchange keys with the server through which go all the comms: it decodes my messages and re-encodes them for my contact.
In e2e, the key exchange is between contacts: the server does not have the private keys.
In Meta, the proprietary app can send your private key to the server and then they know what you wrote. You have no way to know it doesn’t do so!
Opensource audited software is the only way to make sure.