Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

WhatsApp threatened with legal action in Germany over Facebook data sharing deal

independent.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 73 posts

Re: WhatsApp threatened with legal action in Germany over Facebook data sharing deal

#11

Post by eatbitseveryday »

watwatwatwat wrote: post #2

Good! Time to move to telegram! And delete your facebook account! And uninstall whatsapp! I expect nothing less from HN.

There is a lot of hype over encrypted chat programs.

Telegram's encryption is not end-to-end unless you opt into "Secret Chats"[1] and many claim their crypto is not secure[2,3] as they rolled their own[4].

The latest Google chat app Allo also backed away from defaulting to end-to-end encryption for all messages as it lessens the quality of their auto-assistant[5].

The Axolotl protocol (developed by Moxie and Trevor[6]) is available in Signal and was later adopted by WhatsApp. Signal has far fewer features than other chat applications, and people aren't clamoring much about it; I would guess because many people place features > crypto.

Wire (wire.com) uses this protocol as well[7].

WhatsApp being part of Facebook has already called into question their handling of privacy[8], the feature they were originally advertising as their main strength.

[1] https://telegram.org/faq#secret-chats

[2] http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/49782/is-telegra...

[3] http://www.cryptofails.com/post/70546720222/telegrams-crypta...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6916860

[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12547130

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Ratchet_Algorithm

[7] https://wire.com/resource/Wire%20Security%20Whitepaper/downl...

[8] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/technology/relaxing-privac...

Re: WhatsApp threatened with legal action in Germany over Facebook data sharing deal

#12

Post by pawadu »

unicornporn wrote: post #8
watwatwatwat wrote: post #2

Good! Time to move to telegram! And delete your facebook account! And uninstall whatsapp! I expect nothing less from HN.

If you've used Telegram for a while you will notice that in practice no one uses secret chats because these chats don't sync between devices. Your "non-secret" chats are readable by Pavel and anyone he wishes to share them with. I guess it's fine if you trust Pavel's good intentions. I don't[1]. [1] https://www.instagram.com/p/-MrPWGr7aL/

Holy shit, Pavel sounds very much like JM Le Pen.

Re: WhatsApp threatened with legal action in Germany over Facebook data sharing deal

#13

Post by mariusavram »

QuantumRoar wrote: post #9

Remember that when Facebook promises something next time. I'm slowly moving communications over to Signal.

But it's so hard to try to convince non-tech people to move to another app when they are so comfortable with Whatsapp...

Re: WhatsApp threatened with legal action in Germany over Facebook data sharing deal

#15

Post by mhurron »

WhatsApp is Facebook. They're basically just two applications from the same company now. Are we going to have a ruling that data can't be passed from Lync to Skype in Microsoft, or from GMail to Googles Ad network?

Just because corporate policy in 2014 was they would be completely separate doesn't mean that in 2016 that is now seen as a good idea (for them). Facebook makes money off your data, it was pretty obvious this was going to happen eventually.

I do not understand the rage about this from people who know they're the same company.

Re: WhatsApp threatened with legal action in Germany over Facebook data sharing deal

#18

Post by bwindels »

sroecker wrote: post #4
watwatwatwat wrote: post #2

Good! Time to move to telegram! And delete your facebook account! And uninstall whatsapp! I expect nothing less from HN.

Please do not use Telegram. It' closed source and uses some half-baked crypto. Signal is open source and is actually end-to-end encrypted.

No windows phone client :-(

Re: WhatsApp threatened with legal action in Germany over Facebook data sharing deal

#19

Post by raverbashing »

khabaal wrote: post #5
watwatwatwat wrote: post #2

Good! Time to move to telegram! And delete your facebook account! And uninstall whatsapp! I expect nothing less from HN.

I would not entrust my data to telegram either. Enrolling your own crypto protocol [MTProto] is, in my opinion, something which you should not do. They also have a nice privacy policy, which is worth looking at: https://telegram.org/privacy

> Enrolling your own crypto protocol [MTProto] is, in my opinion, something which you should not do

Signal did the same thing.

The question is who's more capable and builds a more secure system

Re: WhatsApp threatened with legal action in Germany over Facebook data sharing deal

#20

Post by microtonal »

eatbitseveryday wrote: post #11
watwatwatwat wrote: post #2

Good! Time to move to telegram! And delete your facebook account! And uninstall whatsapp! I expect nothing less from HN.

There is a lot of hype over encrypted chat programs. Telegram's encryption is not end-to-end unless you opt into "Secret Chats"[1] and many claim their crypto is not secure[2,3] as they rolled their own[4]. The latest Google chat app Allo also backed away from defaulting to end-to-end encryption for all messages as it lessens the quality of their auto-assistant[5]. The Axolotl protocol (developed by Moxie and Trevor[…

Still hoping that iMessage will switch to Axolotl rather than their broken E2E design.
Post reply on HN