Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices • Hacker News Board

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#231

Post by lxgr » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:03 AM UTC

dataflow wrote: post #137

rdrd wrote: post #7

I find the wordsmithery on Meta's statement the most interesting: “We do not track your *PRECISE* location, we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging and we do not track the *PERSONAL* messages people are sending one another," it added. “We do not provide *BULK* information to any government.”

Aren't push notifications logged and used for getting people's data? This was in the news over a year ago: https://www.wired.com/story/apple-google-push-notification-s...

Definitely, but they don't have to contain any (plaintext) message content for encrypted messengers.

On Android, push notifications were always processed by the receiving app, so it can just decrypt a payload directly (or download new messages from the server and decrypt these); on iOS, this isn't as reliable (e.g. swiping the app out of the app switcher used to break it in several iOS versions), but "VoIP notifications" and the newer "message decryption extension" [1] are.

The same principle applies to Web Push – I believe end-to-end encryption is even mandatory there.

[1] https://developer.apple.com/documentation/usernotifications/...

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#232

Post by FridayoLeary » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:08 AM UTC

Buttons840 wrote: post #42

ty6853 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iraq and Gaza was an absolute joke compared to what it would take to topple the Iranian militants, militias, and government. Much of the terrain is similar to Afghanistan. Tribal islamic alliances are resilient against loss of central governance. There is a massive porous mountainous border to 2+ countries that conceivably will look the other way for certain islamic militants. I know everyone wants to gobble down the…

Iran has their terrorist group proxies throughout the region. I think there's some truth to this, although the actions of some truly rogue terrorist groups probably get blamed on Iran because it's been the zeitgeist for a few decades to find reasons to attack Iran. Whatever the case, the current Iran regime hasn't given nuclear material, chemical weapons, or biological weapons to these terror groups. If the current I…

America and Friends. And by that i include russia and china, because even they care about other countries not having nukes. If/when the regime falls nobody will be able to stop them. Just look at Syria.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#233

Post by lenerdenator » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:13 AM UTC

krisoft wrote: post #179

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you see an out for Khamenei et al ? They can’t credibly dismantle their nuclear deterrent and expect to keep their heads. Israel and America cannot accept it, particularly now that its conventional defences have been shown ineffective. The classic approach, airlifting the Ayatollah to a dacha in Moscow while the IRGC saves face and plots a forever path to new elections, falls apart when you consider how Iran’s int…

> They can’t credibly dismantle their nuclear deterrent Mainly because they don’t have one and never had one. Hard to dismantle something you don’t have. Even harder to do so credibly. They had programs to obtain a nuclear deterrent. They can dismantle those programs. But they never had the actual nuclear deterrent itself.

They’re sure refining a lot of material for a country that doesn’t have any plans for putting any of it in a nuclear or radiological weapon.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#234

Post by eddythompson80 » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:14 AM UTC

v5v3 wrote: post #166

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Iranian Regime has strong backing from Brics and others The BRICS meme from a security standpoint is hollower than the financial one. Russia and China have no interest (the former, ability) in getting enmeshed in another Anglo-Iranian war. Most of the oil travelling through the Strait of Hormuz goes to Chinese refineries; they really don’t want this to escalate. Both would probably make the occupation phase painful…

Not true. Chinese planes with transponders being turned off are landing in Iran with unknown Cargo on board. (Reported across the news). Iran is supplying Russia with Drones for Ukraine so strategic partner. Russia recently lost Syria as an ally with the change in government, they will not want to lose Iran to the USA too. If the West can back Ukraine to the level they have done, then no different for Iran's friends…

They are turning off their transponders?! No way.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#235

Post by whodidntante » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:14 AM UTC

gspencley wrote: post #41

msgodel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are we toppling all these foreign governments and creating instability that breads terrorism in places that otherwise have nothing to do with us? This seems so exceptionally counter productive.

> Why are we toppling all these foreign governments I don't want to speak to the other foreign governments, and I think there is a LOT of room for healthy criticism of how the USA handles its foreign policy, past & present. But to answer the question directly with respects to Iran, specifically: the leadership has been repeatedly chanting "Death To America" for its 45 year history and have been actively trying to dev…

My only quibble with what you said is that this war was started by Iran on 10/7/23. Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, etc - these were all part of the self proclaimed "Axis of Resistance".

People may disagree on the ethics of who is the "right" side, if the war was fought "fairly" and according to the "ethics of war", but you would have to do a lot of mental gymnastics to believe that Hamas and Hezbollah and Houthis were not Iranian proxies armed and funded by Iran and acted independently from Iran's goals.

As a corollary, I do not buy into the idea that this Israel/Iran war was/is being fought (only) because of the nuclear issue. It is being fought because it is the last (hopefully) part of the larger war of Israel vs Axis of Resistance, which can only be resolved through the defeat of either Israel or Iran.

If Israel is defeated, the Muslim world can then go on to fight their Shia vs Sunni war, if Iran is defeated, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis, Iran in Iraq, and Houthis will basically go away and those nations/territories will need to determine their future, both internally and their relationships with Israel and the Muslim world.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#236

Post by bdangubic » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:16 AM UTC

Cheer2171 wrote: post #218

bdangubic wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never understand how anyone in their right mind can use any product owned by Meta…

Because the entire rest of society has wrapped itself around Facebook, Whatsapp, and Instagram. It is easy to be a free software purist until you need to know if your child's school has a snow day. Websites and mailing lists are dead. I cannot be involved in my child's school or any of the informal social networks around the parents and teachers without using Meta's platforms. I cannot volunteer at a non-profit I car…

I have same situation and:

- tell parents and teachers I can be reached at xxx-xxx-xxxx if they need anything

- absolutely never had meta-requirement to volunteer. if I did I would 100% know my time there is better spent elsewhere

I am not going to suggest you anything except to tell you that you can live a beautiful live outside of the meta-world. it is super easy

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#237

Post by lenerdenator » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:18 AM UTC

anon291 wrote: post #204

lenerdenator wrote: post #152

All of this to avoid saying "We'd be fine with you existing within your pre-1967 borders."

I'm not sure why we should be 'fine' with people existing in their pre-1967 borders. I'm not advocating any military action, but the idea that we should just shrug while a great classical civilization's entire history and archaeology are being held hostage by iconoclastic religious zealots is not something any humanitarian should just shrug at.

It’s a reference to borders that do not include Gaza, the Golan Heights, or the West Bank.

It’s likely that any two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis would roughly look like how things were before the Six-Day War.

However, I’m getting more at the fact that Iran is unwilling to accept a two-state solution because necessarily, one of those two states would be Israel.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#238

Post by bdangubic » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:19 AM UTC

philistine wrote: post #213

bdangubic wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never understand how anyone in their right mind can use any product owned by Meta…

Imagine a small local non-profit with 5000 likes on their page. They might be trying their darnedest to improve their newsletter numbers, but they still need to be on Facebook. Imagine that times a billion.

meta has made everyone believe that only through their platform can you grow your non-profits and whatnots. and they are obviously great at this, everyone bought that shit. you can organically grow (especially small) non-profits without fucking meta apps.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#239

Post by glenstein » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:19 AM UTC

rdrd wrote: post #7

I find the wordsmithery on Meta's statement the most interesting: “We do not track your *PRECISE* location, we don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging and we do not track the *PERSONAL* messages people are sending one another," it added. “We do not provide *BULK* information to any government.”

It's like the game where you say the same sentence but emphasize a different word each time.

"WE don’t keep logs of who everyone is messaging..."

"We don't KEEP logs of everyone who is messaging..."

"We don't keep logs of EVERYONE who is messaging..."

Etc.

Re: Iran asks its people to delete WhatsApp from their devices

#240

Post by BenjiWiebe » Wed, Jun 18, 2025, 1:19 AM UTC

lxgr wrote: post #217

femto wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the WhatsApp program generate and store/mange the private keys? If so, it would be possible for the program to send private keys on request, effectively backdooring the endpoint. Such an arrangement would allow Meta to put its hand on it heart and truthfully say it is end-to-end encrypted (on the network), whilst still providing a way around it.

Yes, but users can compare fingerprints (sure, most probably don't, but it's definitely a deterrence against MITMing all conversations by default), receive warnings whenever fingerprints change etc. There's also supposedly a key transparency service deployed (similar to Certificate Transparency), but I haven't looked into that in detail.

Sharing private keys gets around all that.