91–100 of 192 posts
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It is huge in Latin America. USA is special because it is the (only?) country where iPhone has more users than Android.
It's crazy how an US company dominates the world's messaging market but not in the US
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iMessage is end to end encrypted. Although Apple says it secure and the courts and FBI seem to not be able to get it in, it is still closed source.
I can't tell if I'm being paranoid or just realistic, when I suspect that FBI/Apple fights over decrypting/unlocking iPhones or iMessage are just part of Apple's security theater. If I were Evil-Tim-Cook, I'd have a deal with the FBI (and other agencies) where I'd hand over some user's data, in return for them keeping that secret and occasionally very publicly taking Apple to court demanding they expose a specific us…
Apple is a part of PRISM so there's approximately a 100% chance that anything you send to Apple via message, cloud, or whatever else, gets sent onto the NSA and consequently any agency that wants it. But the entire mass data collection they are doing is probably unconstitutional and thus illegal. But anytime it gets challenged in courts it gets thrown out on a lack of standing - nobody can prove it was used against them, so they don't have the legal standing to sue.
And the reason this is, is because its usage is never acknowledged in court. Instead there is parallel construction. [1] For instance imagine the NSA finds out somebody is e.g. muling some drugs. They tip off the police and then the police find the car in question and create some reason to pull it over - perhaps it was 'driving recklessly.' They coincidentally find the cache of drugs after doing a search of the car because the driver was 'behaving erratically', and then this 'coincidence' is how the evidence is introduced into court.
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So getting back to Apple they probably want to have their cake and eat it too. By giving the NSA et al all they want behind the scenes they maintain those positive relations (and compensatory $$$ from the government), but then by genuinely fighting its normalization (which would allow it to be directly introduced) in court, they implicitly lie to their users that they're keeping their data protected. So it's this sort of strange thing where it's a facade, but simultaneously also real.
Complaint:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.45...
"He also claimed the company failed to remedy the hacking and takeover of more than 100,000 accounts each day, ignoring his pleas and proposed fixes and choosing instead to prioritize user growth." There is no oversight of these monstrosities of any sort. I doubt anyone would have issues with the thesis that Meta would implement anything that might curb their user numbers unless it was mandated. Why would they? They…
And not every CEO begins life in their company with "if you need any info just ask, they trust me, dumb fucks"
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how would you restore if you lost your device?
Backups with Advanced Data Protection also enroll: * Recovery Keys * Recovery Contact (someone who holds your recovery key in key escrow)
When these conditions aren't met, any e2e encryption claim can be dismissed out of hand. This does not mean the service offers no value, it just means it cannot be trusted to keep anything confidential.
That's rather surprising about the accessing user data bit. When I was at Meta, the quickest way to get fired as an engineer was to access user data/accounts without permission or business reason. Everything was logged/audited down to the database level. Can't imagine that changing and the rules are taught very early on in the onboarding/bootcamp process.
Different culture from the blue app, or whatever they call it?
Given how WhatsApp is the de-facto way to communicate outside of the West and China, these security/data-handling "weaknesses" are most likely a feature, not a bug. An absolute bonanza for the certain intelligence services. Remember, kids: End to end encryption is useless if the "ends" are fully controlled by an (untrustworthy) third party.
> outside of the West you probably mean outside of the USA, it's huge in Europe/UK (which doesn't contradict your main point)
Russia: Telegram
Taiwan: Line
Japan: Line
By contrast, WhatsApp is best known to me for being used in Europe, Australia, and India.
That's rather surprising about the accessing user data bit. When I was at Meta, the quickest way to get fired as an engineer was to access user data/accounts without permission or business reason. Everything was logged/audited down to the database level. Can't imagine that changing and the rules are taught very early on in the onboarding/bootcamp process.
Do you have proof?
From people at Facebook circa 2018, I know that end user privacy was addressed at multiple checkpoints -- onboarding, the UI of all systems that could theoretically access PII, war stories about senior people being fired due to them marginally misunderstanding the policy, etc.
Note that these friends did not belong to WhatsApp, which was at that time a rather separate suborg.
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Companies are not relationships where once they're your ex they are never worth interacting with ever again. If you are doing good work and then HR pushes you out, then it is reasonable to sue the company to get them to pay you damages and then go back to doing what you were before with the protection that they won't do it again.
The point I tried to make was not that he should be resentful about being kicked out, but that he doesn't really care that Meta is unethical and endangers billions. Even if nothing changes (the regulatory action is optional), he's happy to contribute (he insists, in fact). Even among people who don't want him there.