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?
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)
Oh also @Thisfox@sopuli.xyz
Instead of Telegram, consider one of these, it’s easier to switch to the good one now than to try and switch again later.
https://www.privacyguides.org/en/real-time-communication
Signal works great for my family
I have been using Telegram for… A really long time. A decade? Maybe not that long. But yeah, no reason to change from what works for me. You’re right about that.
Signal and Matrix(?) and the others all seem to be a recent development, and although I have downloaded a few, no one else has them or has heard of them, so their directories are empty as I have never found anyone who wants to connect that way. It means I don’t know how to use or teach older people how to use the software. I am trying to find a simple evidence-based way to encourage my family to change their minds, but it appears it will only make me look paranoid, so probably won’t try.
That’s fair enough, it’s really location based. Around where I am, telegram isn’t that popular. I’ve met a few people using Signal and I have friends/collegues pop up in the “____ has Signal” section of the app.
We don’t really have a dominant chat app around here, there’s a good mix of messenger/instagram/iMessage, with some groups sticking to Whatsapp/WeChat/Viber.
I am trying to find a simple evidence-based way to encourage my family to change their minds, but it appears it will only make me look paranoid
I think part of it is because it’s hard to convince people without first explaining how things work. Not much use in worrying about it if you can’t, just look out for yourself. What you COULD do is to use the private option when you need to talk about something sensitive. If the app is installed on their phone then they’re more likely to use it, and even if not then you’re looking out for yourself
iMessage definitely has more hooks in than those listed. It’s an integral Apple service that’s hooked into your deeper iCloud account. And because of that, they know a lot more than just a mere “chat” app would get access to. Which likely makes it harder to quantify.
Moreover, Meta and Alphabet also cross reference a lot of data points from all the other sources they have (cookies, IP logs, etc.). Again making actual data points fuzzy or incomplete.
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I do not consent to Signal knowing about my empty box
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Cybersec researcher here. The content of your chat is encrypted end to end. Their servers can’t read what you write. This is because they use the same protocol as signal, x3dh and double ratchet. However, they can and will collect everything else. Contact info, for example, phone, etc
If you login to another device with WhatsApp, does it show your chat history? If so, then the servers have your key.
I’ve never used any FB service, so I don’t know., and I don’t know anyone who uses WhatsApp.
To “link” other devices you have to scan a qr from your phone, so it’s certainly possible that during that process the devices connect and share the key, and the servers don’t have it.
Or the servers could have it. Idk, it’s closed source, that’s the problem at hand.
Sounds like it transfers the ID Out-of-band, so that’s good, does the desktop get the chat history then? (It’s possible it pulls chat history from the phone).
Oh, I agree with the closed source issue. That makes it a no-sale for me.
Initially you could only log in from one device, as it created a new private key every time you switched device. Then they implemented Whatsapp Web, which essentially required the primary device to be connected to the internet, the chats would then be transferred from the primary device to the secondary devices (I assume through an encrypted tunnel of some sorts). Then as of late they have implemented a new technology that allows you to share your private key among multiple devices, making them all the “primary device”. The chat history and all the messages can be shared from one device to another while encrypted. The weak spot at one point was the chat backup, which was unencrypted and stored in your Google Drive, so technically Google could have had access to all your chats. Today though, you can encrypt the backup through a password.
In theory Whatsapp has never needed to read your chats to have the functionality it has. That’s in theory because it’s closed source and we cannot know anything for certain. All this is just what Meta/Whatsapp said or pure speculation.
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No Telegram lol. Thats way worse. Whatsapp sais they are E2EE but its all “trust me bro” because you cannot look at the code.
With Telegram its a little pain to open encrypted chats and groups are always unencrypted. So its useless.
Let them try Signal, its nearly identical but you can trust it.
Iunno if I would say that Signal can be trusted considering their ties to the US State Dept
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i’ve seen the bullet points from that article riffed in different ways, but i think that’s the most important part:
- They know you rang a phone sex line at 2:24 am and spoke for 18 minutes. But they don’t know what you talked about.
- They know you called the suicide prevention hotline from the Golden Gate Bridge. But the topic of the call remains a secret.
- They know you got an email from an HIV testing service, then called your doctor, then visited an HIV support group website in the same hour. But they don’t know what was in the email or what you talked about on the phone.
- They know you received an email from a digital rights activist group with the subject line “Let’s Tell Congress: Stop SESTA/FOSTA” and then called your elected representative immediately after. But the content of those communications remains safe from government intrusion.
- They know you called a gynecologist, spoke for a half hour, and then called the local abortion clinic’s number later that day.
Whatsapp is encrypted. The problem is the Metadata they want - i.e. your whole address book.
I do not agree to Facebook having my phone number, but if you use WA and have my number, they have it, too - even if I don’t use WA myself.
If you can convince your family to switch, use Signal or Matrix.
Otherwise, use Shelter on your phone with a limited, WA-ony address book.
In a similar situation as you (entire society revolves around whatsapp). I came to this conclusion:
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Others won’t share my view on personal privacy at all will happily give out any metadata or data. No matter what secure channel we use, the destination (people) will always leak.
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Because of (1), consider all communication with others as public, no matter the inferred intimacy, no matter the platform or its security.
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Consider (2) as true even if they somehow used Signal or any secure platform, because of (1). (E.g. “Hey, did you hear about $familyMember? Yes, the weird kiddo who forced me to use some strange blue shit for chat. He got positive on blood exam for $badCondition. Go check on him”)
As for whatsapp itself, i use Android and isolate it in a separate profile, also frozen until opened. I also used a burner phone number for account registration, not my actual number.
People are more receptive of whatsapp accounts with “alternate” numbers when you explain you “got hacked in the past” or any plausible reason.
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- Meta claims it is e2e encrypted
- Meta claims they don’t have the keys and don’t scan the messages
- Meta doesn’t need to scan the messages to get meaningful marketing data about users
- Meta are known liars who will do literally anything for money
Do with that information what you will
Due to a lack of any reliable way of backing that up, I cannot convince anyone else using the opinions of a random on the internet. I was looking for a place I can show them with evidence, so I don’t look like a conspiracy theorist with a pinboard full of string and coloured paper.
It’s proprietary software. You can’t know what they’re actually doing without getting a job there and getting assigned to that project. But given Facebook’s long history of user hostile behavior, the statements from Zuckerberg that people who trust him are idiots, and the class action lawsuits against them for violating consumer trust and straight-up selling user data, I wouldn’t believe anything they say. Why use a 3rd party app run by a user hostile company whose entire business model revolves around capturing user data, when there are better alternatives out there? I understand that I’m preaching to the choir and I apologize. I’ve had the same argument with my two best friends trying to get them to use literally anything other than Whatsapp and they won’t. So we still communicate with a group sms on our phones. That’s better than Whatsapp as far as I’m concerned. You have my sympathies since your group is probably too big to just refuse to participate in and still get communications from.
I case they’re set on WhatsApp:
You could use something like:
https://github.com/mautrix/whatsapp
and bridge WA to a secure Matrix server of your choice. That way you can have a secure environment and they can use whatever they like.
Here is an overview table about messengers, in case you want to compare them and have more arguments in the discussion:
https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html
I wouldn’t consider WA secure. They do tracking, they have your phone numbers and those of all of your friends and know exactly who you talk to, when, and how often. Even if they don’t know the content of the message because it’s encrypted, that’s a lot of information for the algorithm to feed on. Apart from that, I’m not sure if they have access to the encryption keys. They might be able to decrypt everything if they want.
I’m sure someone wrote a lengthy blog article about WA. But unless someone does a proper security audit including where the encryption keys are stored and the implications of that and how extra features like breaking encryption in case someone flags an inappropriate post turns out… The ‘it’s safe’ is just a claim by your brother or Meta. You’re free to believe in anything you want. But it’s not necessarily true.
With the new European regulations Whatapp will soon be forced to offer some compatibility towards 3rd party apps, so there are chances that perhaps bridging in this way will become easier in the near future, or at least have some level of official support. But we won’t know for certain how will it work until it happens. All we know is that Whatsapp is currently working on a way for 3rd parties to connect with them.
Personally, I’d hold for a bit to see where does that go and then decide what method to use.
I don’t want to sound overly negative here. But that idea is more a hypothetical proposal “we should do something about it” at this point. There is a working group mimi. But not even a draft or technical proposal, yet. And interoperability is hard, and they also want to come up with a solution that makes it secure, the messages confidential and maybe grant anonymous access. These problems aren’t solved at all as of today. On top you have to deal with spam, malicious servers, users, lawful interception and all kinds of things in a distributed platform. Then they need to come up with a text for the regulation. Write it, discuss and do several revisions, debate it. And there will be lobbyism against it and court cases because it cuts into the business model of large companies. Then it has to be adopted into national legislation and it will get a grace period.
So if you want to wait 'til 2029 (or so) to reply to your mom, go ahead and wait for the EU. I don’t have a crystal ball to be sure, but I highly doubt that this will happen in the next few years.
And on top, there is no guarantee that it turns out good or usable in the first place. There is a lot of lobbyism happening in the EU. Especially by big tech. They’ll find a way to make it a thing that just connects Apple, Meta and Google and exclude independant or secure services.
Yes, I agree that it feels unrealistic that there will be something stable and good by the time the law actually takes effect. But the regulation (the Digital Markets Act) has been already approved since 2022 and we already have a deadline for Whatsapp set by the EU: March 2024 (6 months from 6th September 2023, which is when the Commission designated Meta as “Gatekeeper” and Whatsapp as a “Core Platform Service”).
So, while I’m very skeptical that the result will be satisfactory, I’m very curious to see what will Whatsapp come up with when the deadline hits, because, allegedly, they are already working on it.
Thx for the additional links!
I’m curious what Meta is going to unveil. Usually big tech companies get ahead of legislation, in order to set a standard they like, or to prevent possible more strict regulation from happening. We see the same thing with AI and practically everything the big tech companies lobby for. I’m a bit wary.
Whatsapp is under the hood still a lightly modified XMPP system, and given Zucks recent comments about federated protocols (albright in a Threads i.e. ActivityPub context), they might just get their XMPP federation working again.
To be frank with you, humans are the weakest security point in any system. Even if you did somehow (impossibly) 100% secure your device… you’re literally sending everything to X other family members who don’t care about security anyway and take zero preventative measures. That’s sort of the point of a chat app. All they would need to do is target your family instead of you to get the exact same info - this is how Facebook has everyone’s telephone number and profile photo, even if they don’t have an account. And if it’s a WhatsApp data breach… well. Your family is just one in a sea of millions of potentially better/easier targets.
If there’s anything interesting about your family chats that is actually secret info, it probably shouldn’t be put into text anywhere except maybe a password manager. Just tell them not to send passwords or illegal stuff or security question info via whatsapp. It’s all you can realistically do in situations like this.
We literally cannot keep all information private from everyone all the time, you have to pick and choose your battles. And even then, you’ll still lose some, even if you’re perfect.
That’s true in the sense that if a very sophisticated organization directly targets your family chat for surveillance, they’re going to find a way to access its content no matter what communication method you use.
Threat modeling is core to security, and that kind of threat probably isn’t the issue here. Mass surveillance, both government and corporate is, and neither is likely to secretly install malware on a family-members phone that can access the contents of the group chat. Doing that to large numbers of people would get them caught; they save it for valuable targets.
Governments openly forcing the install of spyware, as I’ve read China does in some cases would be an exception; you cannot have a secure conversation involving a device so compromised.
The contents of the chat messages are e2e encrypted, so meta can’t see what you are sending.
But they can see all of the Meta data, ie how often you chat with someone, how often you send pictures/videos/voice messages, etc.
That is more than enough to know everything about you and your friends.
The contents of the chat messages are e2e encrypted, so meta can’t see what you are sending.
Even if we assume correct e2ee is used (which we have no way of knowing), Meta can still see what you are sending and receiving, because they control the endpoints. It’s their app, after all.
They use the Signal protocol for e2ee.
WhatsApp gives you the option to back up all messages to Google or Apple Cloud unencrypted.
My way around the issue with the app and its collection is :
- Install in a separate profile with empty everything. (So they get an empty contact list)
- Install beeper in a different profil and connect WhatsApp to beeper.
- Remove all permissions from WhatsApp. There if I need to reconnect sometime.
Oh and using fake number is also a good idea. And yes not as good as selfhosting I know. Signal is an option if you can get them to switch. Telegram is crap.
so now Beeper has got all of your Whatsapp messages going through their servers, unencrypted.
So yea a bit of trust put in beeper. Matrix bridge and self host is as I said better.
This is easy. For services that’s not so good to start with , like SMS , WhatsApp etc.
For sensitive stuff i use signal with a fake number. Or other channels.
They will not switch anyway…
They will if I don’t sound paranoid and can give rational answers backed up with real articles that aren’t conspiracy sites. Much of my family are teachers, everyone has at least one university degree, and is capable of rational thought and critical thinking. They just don’t see a reason to switch. I need to put forward a reason that is worth their time.
I like your (ungrounded) optimism
