Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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How Facebook Undermines Privacy Protections for Its 2 Billion WhatsApp Users (www.propublica.org)

submitted 3 years ago by riccardo@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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[–] Helix@feddit.de 0 points 3 years ago (4 children)

It does not break end-to-end encryption.

Well, in my opinion, it kind of does, since it doesn't notify the user that their messages are being forwarded.

company officials confirmed they do turn on such tracking at their own discretion — even for internal Facebook leak investigations

Oh, I'm sure, that never caused any problems in the past. Just like it never caused problems at other companies like Apple or three letter agencies like the NSA.

[–] ethicallypulmonary@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 years ago (3 children)

Well, in my opinion, it kind of does, since it doesn’t notify the user that their messages are being forwarded.

That's more than Signal does. This is not a typical feature; I can't think of an end-to-end encrypted messenger that does do this. If you want to make this argument, all end-to-end-encrypted messengers must be broken because the person who receives the message can then send it to anyone else without your knowledge, or take a photo. It's trivial.

[–] Helix@feddit.de 0 points 3 years ago (2 children)

The thing is that this can be triggered externally. It's not the user forwarding to another user, it's the company having a spy feature built in.

[–] tomtom@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 years ago (1 children)

well it seems like they track the unencrypted metadata and share it with law enforcement. i wouldn't necessarily consider this breaking end to end encryption...

there is a separate issue with the "reporting" feature where the other end can voluntarily send your (decrypted) messages to facebook for content moderation. i dont think the article claimed that decrypted messages were being automatically sent...

[–] Helix@feddit.de 0 points 3 years ago

it seems like they track the unencrypted metadata and share it with law enforcement

Not only that, but a machine learning algorithm "reports" messages. That's the problem here, not the user reporting.