this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'm all for discrediting Facebook services for better alternatives, but Whatsapp employs End to End encryption by default, while SMS is readable from your ISP and anyone intercepting your conversation.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Facebook sends any messages it can to the police when they request so. Woman and her daughter were sent to prison for coordinating daughter's abortion over Fbook Messenger, which is also supposed to be E2EE:

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-turned-chat-messages-mother-daughter-now-charged-abortion-rcna42185

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Facebook messenger has never claimed to be e2e encrypted

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

"Facebook Messenger offers end-to-end encryption, meaning chats between two users will be visible only on users’ phones and aren’t readable by Facebook or any government entity that makes a legal request to the company. But the option is available only to people using the Messenger app on mobile devices, and messages are encrypted only after users select the option to mark chats as “secret.”"

From their linked article.

It's insane to only have E2EE as an opt in feature.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I guess it's because they added it later so they can claim to have it while still being able to datamine the average user. Not that insane given that it's Facebook. I'd say what's insane is that's the same as what Telegram does and some people think that's secure!

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

The comment I replied to wasn't

Fbook Messenger, which is also supposed to be E2EE

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

When you send sms, you might as well be sending smoke signals. Not as if sms is secure in any modern sense of the word...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

The object is not Facebook Messenger, which only uses E2EE with a specific hidden feature and is disabled by default.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Facebook makes money selling data for advertising. They don’t host and maintain what’s app for the good of mankind. every single thing you send on the app is being harvested for data and you know it. It is decrypted at each end and hovered up for sale to the highest bidder.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Facebook makes money mainly from advertising, yes, which can be done also on Whatsapp and will be in the future.

While they can still harvest some data from Whatsapp even if conversations are encrypted, my point was that they have no way to read the content of messages you send.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Think about what end to end encryption does. The client at one end encrypts the data for transmission after it has been typed. The client at the other end decrypts it for the other user to read. While the message cannot be viewed by anyone in between, it’s plain old data at both ends. If you can read the data, the software you are reading it on can also read the data.

Fb harvests all that data because they can. If you think E2EE is keeping their eyes off the data, you are mistaken. It keeps MY eyes of your data. It (in theory) keeps the government’s eyes off your data. For 100% privacy, you have to control the client software. You do not control the client software.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I don't use Facebook and neither should you. Whatsapp is their only decent product, probably because it was bought when it was already decent.