!dev

An interesting read about why the second (and last) WhatsApp co-founder left Facebook while leaving behind a whopping 850 million because ethics/morals.

"I sold my users' privacy to a larger benefit," Acton told Forbes. "I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day."

Here's the article (do click through to the Forbes one): https://fossbytes.com/whatsapp-co-f...

I never understood if whatsapp has end to end encryption then how does anyone interpret any messages to analyze/whatever?
Or is it something other than the encrypted messages that compromises privacy?

@N0-Flux-Given technically it has end to end encryption, the only thing is that the key is not only yours

Either Facebook has a master key or has a copy of your key

That's why you can sync your Whatsapp history to a new phone (if it was encrypted on their server it would return as garbage)

I'm sorry, but I refuse to ever deliberately go to Forbes' website again, due to their absolutely horrid UX. (Check a past rant of mine for further details)

@incognito WhatsApp Messages are deleted from their server as soon as they are delivered, so you're basically transferring a binary blob of database from your old phone to the new phone. What I actually don't know is if these are encrypted or not and if yes, how the new WhatsApp installation can encrypt these if it doesn't have the key.
But I could still download images and videos sent to a group two years ago, but not from a private chat, so at least they're storing that permanently.

Real interesting read, thx for sharing!

@incognito in my experience I can only do that if I have the backup feature enabled. Which backups my chats to Google Drive and not Facebook's servers. Chats that aren't backed up or messages I got after the backup aren't transfered to the new phone.
Images and videos from group chats can be synced because aren't those chats not end to end encrypted? Or they can be downloaded from another member. Maybe someone should do a quick test. Get 3 members, share a pick. Delete it from your own phone. Try and get it back (that'll work). Everyone removed the image and then try and get it back. If you can then it's stored on their servers. Then we know.

@Koolstr you can just read the fossbytes article :)

@RantSomeWhere I keep running into time issues 😫

@CoffeeNcode Went to sleep at 11, woke up at 1, couldn't sleep until 4 and woke up at 5:45 again .___.