I think the PR department picked this perfect moment. The problem is that Facebook has to abandon those conversations if the government demands it. This is also the case here in the Netherlands. Now they can say “but using it for this is so far away for us, that we’re going to roll out E2EE faster to protect our users”. This gives the impression that Facebook really cares about your privacy, security, etc. etc.

In this case, I understand it comes as a complete surprise. That mother and daughter were discussing something that was completely legal until very recently… Now look. Really such a situation that “you can trust your government now, but you never know about tomorrow” comes true.

Also, I don’t think you can really take a bad look at Facebook about this. This law is insane and Facebook cannot ignore such a summons to hand over the conversations they have access to. The same can happen to your ISP, your mail provider (it doesn’t matter which one, even if you’re with an unknown hosta) etc. Mail in particular is also disastrous because rarely anyone uses S/MIME or even PGP. And yes, the fact that people also use insecure services like SMS (very big in the US; still), Facebook Messenger, Skype, Telegram, Discord, etc for their (sensitive) private conversations doesn’t make it any better.

This is actually one of the reasons privacy advocates have said for years that constantly giving up and centrally storing all of your data, including private conversations, is simply a bad plan. It’s not because privacy is something to “hide something illegal” or to be “sneaky” so many people try to bully you. (“Do you have something to hide then? What can’t stand the light of day?” John, it’s none of your business what you had for lunch this afternoon!) Then the legislation also changes drastically, you get these kinds of situations.

Long story short: If you haven’t already (generally speaking, hey, it doesn’t have to be directed at you Julianne). ), start protecting your privacy and security online today. A good start is to ignore insecure services like FB Messenger, Telegram, SMS, but also actually WhatsApp due to the set of metadata (although the content of your conversation is encrypted, that makes a difference.) etc. for private chats and switch to a secure messenger like Signal. So it’s good to see that as a result of that mother and daughter news, you’re seeing an increase in Signal registrations from the US. And take a look too https://privacyguides.org/

[Reactie gewijzigd door WhatsappHack op 11 augustus 2022 17:53]