Re:WhatsApp gives users an ultimatum: Share data with Facebo...
by hiq on Friday January 08, 2021 @12:02PM
(#25686777)
> - Metadata handled by Amazon
That's rather broad, which metadata are you thinking about? Especially given the sealed sender feature. Assuming you have access to everything at Amazon, what can you deduce about Signal users?
I can think of:
- IP address (you can tell that this IP address sent some Signal message)
- size of messages
- timestamps of messages (when they were received by an Amazon server)
IP address leaks a lot of information but there are still workarounds, and it seems reasonable if you're in a no-trust model (meaning Signal's servers wouldn't be any better than Amazon's). In any case, that's way less information than other mainstream messengers.
On the other hand, one distinguishing feature regarding metadata is groups: group membership is not known by anyone outside of the group if I understand correctly, contrary to WhatsApp (and others).
That's rather broad, which metadata are you thinking about? Especially given the sealed sender feature. Assuming you have access to everything at Amazon, what can you deduce about Signal users?
I can think of:
- IP address (you can tell that this IP address sent some Signal message)
- size of messages
- timestamps of messages (when they were received by an Amazon server)
IP address leaks a lot of information but there are still workarounds, and it seems reasonable if you're in a no-trust model (meaning Signal's servers wouldn't be any better than Amazon's). In any case, that's way less information than other mainstream messengers.
On the other hand, one distinguishing feature regarding metadata is groups: group membership is not known by anyone outside of the group if I understand correctly, contrary to WhatsApp (and others).