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WhatsApp Messaging Interoperability

developers.facebook.com

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Re: WhatsApp Messaging Interoperability

#81

Post by htrp »

sealeck wrote: post #69
cesarb wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may dislike it, but EU law only applies in the EU; Even then, that consecutive 60-day limit sounds bizarre. For instance, someone who has dual citizenship could legitimately switch between an EU and a non-EU country every single month. Why shouldn't that person have access to these "Interoperable Messaging Services" when in the EU?

If you switch every month then you will have been present in the EU within any 60-day window?

Literally lawyering up the implementation

Re: WhatsApp Messaging Interoperability

#82

Post by doctorpangloss »

afavour wrote: post #62
concinds wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may dislike it, but EU law only applies in the EU; it sounds like full compliance to me, not "bad faith" compliance. Messaging-interoperability is the one aspect of the DMA I don't support. These apps are free to download; and if you care about security (and use Signal) you'll want to avoid cross-service messaging anyway.

> These apps are free to download Yes but you aren’t truly free to choose which app you download. You have to use the one being used by the people you want to message. That is of strong benefit to incumbents.

Has there been meaningful innovation in messaging? I had free AIM on $3 T-Zones in 2006. So I see no downsides to just forcing interoperability.

Re: WhatsApp Messaging Interoperability

#83

Post by sneak »

jayknight wrote: post #64
laurex wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's an interesting philosophical question: if we have a fediverse or open source ecosystem for communication that is deeply integrated into Big Tech, does that make the fediverse stronger, or does it neuter the impact of fediverse as a possible "infrastructure-level" competitor of communication and information sharing?

We can look back in time to see that, ultimately, Google's adoption of XMPP was bad for XMPP.

It was also bad for Google, as it cost a lot to build, was almost completely unused by their userbase, and resulted in a lot of inbound spam.

Re: WhatsApp Messaging Interoperability

#84

Post by lxgr »

arp242 wrote: post #78
Calvin02 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be confusing interoperability with WA’s desires to make sure that e2e encryption isn’t broken. What’s the point of thinking that WhatsApp is e2ee if anyone can write their own end point? my friends and I use WhatsApp because we know the messages are secure. Imagine if every other group message had the “green bubble” equivalent experience if someone was using a custom client.

You can do E2E encryption without all of these requirements. It's basically just TOFU some key when someone messages you. You can do 3rd-party implementation for other E2E messengers: Telegram, Signal (even though they don't like it), and of course XMPP (with extension). I need to read a bit more carefully through the (limited) technical documentation they have; but all of this seems highly excessive. I'm not a distr…

To be fair, there is one aspect where the platform is trusted with services like Signal and WhatsApp: Identity to phone number binding.

Many people don't actually ever verify their contacts' keys, but rather just rely on the platform provider to have done phone number verification correctly. In that sense, the security model is bit better than TOFU in practice.

> I'm not a distrustful or cynical person by nature, but I find it hard to avoid the impression that they intentionally made it as hard as possible.

There I fully agree. If anyone could find a way, it's the company running the largest messaging infrastructure in the world.

Re: WhatsApp Messaging Interoperability

#85

Post by albert180 »

mbertschler wrote: post #57
advisedwang wrote: post #27

Wow this shows the DMA might really do some good. I'm impressed with EU regulation. Standardized chargers, ending roaming charges, GDPR, DMA. Definitly worth the side effects overall.

Side effects like horrendous cookie banners everywhere. I really like the DMA too

Just use an Add-On like Consent-O-Matic that declines/accept (based on your preferences) automatically for you. This way you also don't have to deal with the illegal shady dark patterns, many companies use

Re: WhatsApp Messaging Interoperability

#86

Post by alexsereno »

discostrings wrote: post #72
alexsereno wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey I can shed light on this. It’s the iCloud keychain. Disabling the keychain doesn’t delete existing entries. There is no way to modify the keychain on iOS (you can on Mac). Lots of apps store sign on data in the keychain for obvious reasons. It would be really great to have a keychain section in iOS’s settings, like Keychain Access on Mac. The dev can build in-app functionality to delete keys from the keychain, bu…

It's not specific to iCloud Keychain--it applies to on-device Keychain on iOS devices, too, even if you don't use iCloud. Any developer can store data there with no way for the user to know or see what it's saving, and it's shared among all apps from the same developer. Keychain is quite a misnomer here--it's really "store any (short) data you want on a user's device without them ever being able to see or remove it".…

You’re right, I could have specified that even if you don’t use iCloud you have a keychain on iOS

Re: WhatsApp Messaging Interoperability

#87

Post by lxgr »

Calvin02 wrote: post #71
arp242 wrote: post #65

Gosh, all of this is so locked down. I've been waiting for this, and hoping I could "just" cook up some of my own code to use with WhatsApp, and/or integrate it with Pidgin or bridge to email or whatever. But the entire process is about as hostile as possible. For example "Partner shall have in place a dedicated security team" basically excludes most startups, or most smaller companies. It's not clear to me if this i…

You seem to be confusing interoperability with WA’s desires to make sure that e2e encryption isn’t broken. What’s the point of thinking that WhatsApp is e2ee if anyone can write their own end point? my friends and I use WhatsApp because we know the messages are secure. Imagine if every other group message had the “green bubble” equivalent experience if someone was using a custom client.

If that's your assumption, I've got bad news: People can already use third-party clients! WhatsApp "mods" for Android, third-party clients hooking into the web client etc. have all long been possible.

Without the DMA, Meta can make it very hard for any business model based on them, but it's never been a technical obstacle.

In a very similar way, you also need to trust your friends to not activate WhatsApp chat backups to Google Drive or iCloud without a password if you don't want end-to-end encryption to be compromised (there's no indication if they have it on or not), and that's the default suggestion by the official client.

Re: WhatsApp Messaging Interoperability

#88

Post by arp242 »

Razengan wrote: post #5

There's something really appalling that I discovered lately and I can't believe there isn't enough uproar about it. Every attempt to talk about this gets ignored or buried (maybe by people who want this ""feature"" to be kept quiet) so I will take every opportunity on existing discussions about Facebook to bring it up: Facebook (and TikTok) store tracking data on iOS that the user CANNOT SEE and CANNOT DELETE: • It s…

> Every attempt to talk about this gets ignored or buried (maybe by people who want this ""feature"" to be kept quiet) so I will take every opportunity on existing discussions about Facebook to bring it up:

Or maybe this happens because it's completely off-topic here and has nothing what-so-ever to do with WhatsApp?

Most of your other messages seem similarly off-topic: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Not only that, people have already answered your question in a previous thread.

Re: WhatsApp Messaging Interoperability

#89

Post by lxgr »

threeseed wrote: post #37
Razengan wrote: post #5

There's something really appalling that I discovered lately and I can't believe there isn't enough uproar about it. Every attempt to talk about this gets ignored or buried (maybe by people who want this ""feature"" to be kept quiet) so I will take every opportunity on existing discussions about Facebook to bring it up: Facebook (and TikTok) store tracking data on iOS that the user CANNOT SEE and CANNOT DELETE: • It s…

Not sure why you are using this thread as technical support. Or what tracking data you are referring to ie. is it cookies or local storage but either way you should maybe speak to Apple Support. Yes iOS apps can store local data and if you're unhappy about it then just delete or reinstall the app.

> just delete or reinstall the app.

Well, that doesn't delete all local data. That's exactly the problem!

Re: WhatsApp Messaging Interoperability

#90

Post by lxgr »

alexsereno wrote: post #55
Razengan wrote: post #5

There's something really appalling that I discovered lately and I can't believe there isn't enough uproar about it. Every attempt to talk about this gets ignored or buried (maybe by people who want this ""feature"" to be kept quiet) so I will take every opportunity on existing discussions about Facebook to bring it up: Facebook (and TikTok) store tracking data on iOS that the user CANNOT SEE and CANNOT DELETE: • It s…

Hey I can shed light on this. It’s the iCloud keychain. Disabling the keychain doesn’t delete existing entries. There is no way to modify the keychain on iOS (you can on Mac). Lots of apps store sign on data in the keychain for obvious reasons. It would be really great to have a keychain section in iOS’s settings, like Keychain Access on Mac. The dev can build in-app functionality to delete keys from the keychain, bu…

> Keychain storage doesn’t let FB track you

It sure lets app developers identify me across app deletions and reinstalls!

I'm also not sure why Apple has kept this loophole open for so long when they are otherwise so focused on making sure user tracking across reinstalls is so hard (e.g. by making APNs tokens change after a reinstall, which used to not be the case as well, restricting access to read the device MAC address and other permanent identifiers etc).

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