News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:WhatsApp announces key transparency being added to WhatsApp by tgtweak on Thursday April 13, 2023 @10:22AM (#35555922)
The privacy policy alone on whatsapp is what is keeping everyone I know off of it. It's egregious. FB is 100% snooping on what is being discussed, and if they are now moving to fully client-to-client encrypted on ALL chats (not just the ones you explicitly choose) it's only because they're losing market share to alternatives that are more trustworthy.
Re:WhatsApp announces key transparency being added to WhatsApp by tapoxi on Thursday April 13, 2023 @10:26AM (#35555985)
Whatsapp has been fully e2e for years, maybe since 2016? It uses the Signal protocol.
Re:WhatsApp announces key transparency being added to WhatsApp by NayamAmarshe on Thursday April 13, 2023 @02:16PM (#35559718)
> It uses the Signal protocol.

Is there any evidence for this? Like any independent audits like Signal and Telegram have for their protocols?

Re:WhatsApp announces key transparency being added to WhatsApp by tapoxi on Thursday April 13, 2023 @08:48PM (#35564219)
It was done by Signal themselves: https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/

The client is closed so it can't be independently verified outside of sniffing traffic or decompilation I assume.

Re:WhatsApp announces key transparency being added to WhatsApp by Armic on Thursday April 13, 2023 @10:27AM (#35555998)
As someone unfamiliar with their privacy policy, can you explain what’s egregious about it?
Re:WhatsApp announces key transparency being added to WhatsApp by tgtweak on Thursday April 13, 2023 @11:14AM (#35556742)
Remember when they tried to force everyone to accept the new terms or they would disable access after a certain date? Then they walked it back after people started using alternative platforms.

https://www.livemint.com/technology/apps/whatsapp-to-make-ne...

Re:WhatsApp announces key transparency being added to WhatsApp by bmarquez on Thursday April 13, 2023 @11:26AM (#35556907)
The privacy policy was never "walked back", they decided to do it anyway after the controversy (on HN and other platforms) died down.

Here's a newer article showing the metadata being sent to Facebook (presumably for advertising purposes), it includes your phone number, device ID, and location.

https://www.androidauthority.com/whatsapp-privacy-1189873/

Re:WhatsApp announces key transparency being added to WhatsApp by palata on Thursday April 13, 2023 @12:20PM (#35557866)
> FB is 100% snooping on what is being discussed

Wrong. It has been end-to-end encrypted since 2016. The whole TOS thing was about metadata.

Still I like Signal better, but that's not a reason to be wrong about WhatsApp :-).