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.

  • amanneedsamaid@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    231·
    8 months ago

    Metadata is all the content of a message besides the actual text content of the message (i.e. what you type). Examples would be the date and time it is sent, what users these messages were sent to / from, and the IP addresses of both parties. (The availability of metadata varies from messenger to messenger).

    I like this example: If you only text your Aunt Sally, who lives in Alaska, twice per year to wish her a happy birthday and Christmas, just by looking at the metadata someone could infer the meaning of your messages, as well as your relationship to the person you’re messaging. To a point this is true about any messages you sent.

    As for Whatsapp specifically, it being end-to-end doesn’t really matter imo, as the application is not open source and is owned by an advertising / social media company. As long as the code is closed source, you cannot be sure:

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

    At least for applications handling truly sensitive information (for the average person only their messenger and browser), you should be using open source software. The easiest recommendations I can make are:

    1. Browsers: Firefox, Thorium, Brave
    2. Messengers: Signal, SimpleX Chat, XMPP

    Anyways, I hope this was a satisfactory answer.

    • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
      2·
      8 months 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 receive 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.

      • bouh@lemmy.world
        1·
        8 months ago

        They would better hide those evidences as best as they can, or they would lose a useful source of informations.

        That’s the whole game of intelligence: to be a step ahead of the opponent, it must believe its safe so you can steal useful informations. As soon as the breach is discovered, it ceases to be useful.

        • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
          1·
          8 months ago

          Sure. My point is that, as far as I believe anyone is currently aware, there is no evidence that any law enforcement agency has ever accessed the content of encrypted WhatsApp messages. That does not mean that it has never happened either, but anyone positively claiming so is doing it without actual evidence, which is something we should probably avoid doing.

    • whale@lemm.ee
      1·
      8 months ago

      Metadata includes:

      1. Who
      2. When
      3. Where
      4. More?

      For example, if we look at Whatsapp:

      1. We know the sender and recipient(s) by phone number
      2. Time and date of every message and how frequently
      3. IP address (relative location)
      4. Every phone number is probably tied to a Facebook identity, which includes online and/or offline information about you and all your friends

      And that’s just if we take Facebook at its word