Techlore: WhatsApp Caught in Massive Encryption Scandal?

General
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WhatsApp just got sued for allegedly lying about end-to-end encryption, with claims that Meta employees can access any user’s messages through a simple internal request. While the lawsuit provides no technical proof, we’ll show you the confirmed privacy issues with WhatsApp and explain why closed-source encryption is fundamentally untrustworthy.

Quick clarification since some comments may get this mixed up: even IF the lawsuit’s encryption claims are false, the ProPublica metadata stuff I mentioned is 100% confirmed and documented. WhatsApp absolutely shares messaging patterns, timestamps, location data, and contact networks with law enforcement & across other Facebook products. It’s not just about message content. Quality messengers like Signal collect way less metadata by design.

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Well the metadata stuff is not new. Perhaps they filed a lawsuit as a revenge than supporting any actual agenda.
Although important thing to note is , whatsapp front end client and backed end are both closed source, so there can many be things we can’t be 100% sure of.
I am not sure if there is a way to reverse engineering things and check for any fishy stuff.
My most serious worry would be deployment of AI in personal chats which could have potential to leak your chats.

Also chatting with a “business account” on whatsapp maybe accessible to multiple 3rd parties including meta.

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This shouldn’t be necessary. It’s tedious enough to check that open source software functions as intended and as advertised. It boils down to threat modeling; can you take the risk.

  1. You know WhatsApp has access to your metadata, if you can’t have Meta/Trump Goons’ FBI know who you talk to, when, how much etc., don’t use WhatsApp. Use Signal.

  2. You know it’s proprietary, if you can’t trust its end-to-end encryption has a backdoor, use Signal.

  3. If you can’t trust Amazon isn’t secretly handing out Signal’s metadata (that they have access to with malware) to feds, use Cwtch.

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