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What's up with the end-to-end encryption notification all over the whatsapp?
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this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023
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From what I understand, WhatsApp does have proper end to end encryption, which means messages can only be read by the sender and recipient. It's a very good thing, and SHOULD be promoted in my opinion.
But that doesn't mean WhatsApp respects your privacy. Even though the messages are encrypted, the actual app is still collecting and scraping every little piece of info about you possible. Think location, IP addresses, your contacts, what's in your clipboard, camera, mic... I don't know the details, but that's where the privacy concerns come from.
Yes, though since it's closed source, contains other proprietary libraries and probably was never properly audited (by a 3rd party) it's possible (even likely, considering it's Meta we're talking about) that they keep a copy of the private key(s) and the messages, so that they're able to decrypt them, and so still be able to gather the content, in addition to everything else, while they can publicly claim it's all Signal's protocol so everything's "E2E". And yes, the app also gathers a lot of other data (actual and metadata) besides the content of the messages (which Meta can't supposedly see since it's E2E, but I never trust anything from Meta). A Meta app (or Google, or MS, for that matter) should generate the same sort of privacy outrages and media/politics attention like TikTok does, but somehow they don't. "Same shit, different country" was never so fitting.
Here's a very good messenger comparison: https://www.messenger-matrix.de/messenger-matrix-en.html