51–60 of 73 posts
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So what's recommended then? Signal, Wire and Tox?
What's recommended is not posting anything you absolutely need to be secure through some instant messaging app...
If there was ever a case for anti-trust folks to step in and break a larger entity into two separate entities, this would be it. I still have no clue how this deal got ignored by the anti-trust folks, especially after they saw the price tag.
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Agreed. In other new: water is wet Sharing data is what these companies do . The only way to keep your data safe is to use open-source, e2e systems
The data facebook gets from whatsapp is mostly the directed connectivity graph (and the intensity of each edge). That's data that, in the vast majority of e2e setups, any 3rd party with visibility to the network traffic will be able to see.
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 t…
Anybody feels for discussing the actual meat of the post (consumer watchdogs actually threatening to sue Facebook) instead of discussing the alternatives or the lack of proper encryption in Telegram yet again? I for one am very happy to see this, both because it might teach Facebook and others a valuable lesson about messing with European consumers and because I used to love the old Whatsapp.
* Encryption is one possible response to the broader concern around what companies are doing with user data
* The broader concern, what are companies doing with our data, is often only spoken of from the consumer perspective. Consumers don't want liberties taken with their personal information, the nightmare scenario is that no one has privacy.
* From a business perspective: what should FB and WhatsApp do? People are accustomed to getting free services on the internet, it's been that way since the beginning, but these services have always cost someone something. It's not feasible to charge for most messaging services due to competitive reasons.
* On the one side we have a nightmare scenario that no one wants, on the other we have the realistic economics of providing a service. Is there a compromise where the consumers can trust the providers to not harm them while still allowing the providers to make money?
As an aside: Telegram is not, and never will-be, a secure platform as has been detailed on HN by cryptographic experts when the service first launched.
Anybody feels for discussing the actual meat of the post (consumer watchdogs actually threatening to sue Facebook) instead of discussing the alternatives or the lack of proper encryption in Telegram yet again? I for one am very happy to see this, both because it might teach Facebook and others a valuable lesson about messing with European consumers and because I used to love the old Whatsapp.
WhatsApp is free, popular and end to end encrypted. There is only one app that meets all those criteria, which is the one we're talking about.
WhatsApp is probably not that expensive to run but it's also not free, and acquiring the company certainly wasn't. So Facebook have found a way to combine end to end encryption with an ad-supported business model: use the social graph data and business integration to improve FB ads.
To me this seems like pure win: Facebook already had ads, so it's just a matter of them getting better. WhatsApp can be free for everyone in a sustainable way, instead of the western-iOS-users-get-to-pay-for-everyone model WhatsApp used before.
The habit EU governmental bodies have developed of constantly threatening internet companies whenever they change their products is meanwhile turning into noise: any impact it could have had has been lost because these cases are so often frivolous and/or can't actually demonstrate actual harm to anyone. More and more it looks like EU governments simply like bashing American companies, which probably looks free to them: free money and free voter love from the socialist side of the spectrum.
Going back to the question of what lesson to draw from this: there IS a downside, which is that in future tech companies will prefer not to set up offices in Europe at all, but they can't see that. "Set up shop and avoid punishment by being good" is no option because these judgements are so often extremely vague, unpredictable or simply contradict the need of a business to generate revenue to sustain itself. BTW good luck charging Germans for WhatsApp given how few of them have credit cards.
Anybody feels for discussing the actual meat of the post (consumer watchdogs actually threatening to sue Facebook) instead of discussing the alternatives or the lack of proper encryption in Telegram yet again? I for one am very happy to see this, both because it might teach Facebook and others a valuable lesson about messing with European consumers and because I used to love the old Whatsapp.
What lesson are they supposed to draw from this? WhatsApp is free, popular and end to end encrypted. There is only one app that meets all those criteria, which is the one we're talking about. WhatsApp is probably not that expensive to run but it's also not free, and acquiring the company certainly wasn't. So Facebook have found a way to combine end to end encryption with an ad-supported business model: use the social…
In what way is that a win? Giving up my privacy to save $1/year? Please, I'll take privacy all day long.
As for EU governments "hating" American companies: BS. They're actually sticking up for user rights and privacy rights. Something I wish the US would do.
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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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No one will call it that as long as you claim that Signal is trademarked, and threaten legal action against projects using that name.
The LibreSignal issue, where you behaved worse than a kindergarten child (and I know, I volunteered to work some weeks in a kindergarten a few years ago) is still in memory for most people.