And if so, why exactly? It says it’s end-to-end encrypted. The metadata isn’t. But what is metadata and is it bad that it’s not? Are there any other problematic things?

I think I have a few answers for these questions, but I was wondering if anyone else has good answers/explanations/links to share where I can inform myself more.

  • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
    01·
    1 year ago

    That your messages are encrypted at all
    That your encryption keys are kept on-device, and not plainly available to a centralized party
    That the encryption the application is using is securely implemented

    This is true, but something that should be noted is that, to my knowledge, no law enforcement agency has ever received the supposedly encrypted content of WhatsApp messages. Facebook Messenger messages are not E2E encrypted by default, and there have been several stories about Facebook being served a warrant for message content and providing it. This has, as I understand, not occurred for WhatsApp messages. It is possible, of course, that they do have some kind of access and only provide it to very high-level intelligence agencies, but there’s no direct evidence of that.

    I would personally say that it’s more likely than not that WhatsApp message content is legitimately private, but I’d also agree that you should use something like Signal if you’re genuinely concerned about this.