I'm not sure how they expect to make this work with messenger. People expect to find all their messages on any device they log onto, but that just doesn't work with e2e encryption.
Mr. Zuckerberg has also ordered all of the apps to incorporate end-to-end encryption
I'm not sure how they expect to make this work with messenger. People expect to find all their messages on any device they log onto, but that just doesn't work with e2e encryption.
Could all of a user's devices share a private key between them? I'm trying to imagine a scheme where the key is stored on FB's servers, but is encrypted with the user's password. When they log in...
Could all of a user's devices share a private key between them? I'm trying to imagine a scheme where the key is stored on FB's servers, but is encrypted with the user's password. When they log in the private key is downloaded and decrypted, then used to sign outgoing messages.
Yeah, what you describe is used by various zero-access service providers. The catch is that if the user forgets their password, they are boned and lose access to all data that was encrypted with...
Yeah, what you describe is used by various zero-access service providers.
The catch is that if the user forgets their password, they are boned and lose access to all data that was encrypted with the password. If the service provider has the ability to reset the password for the user while still giving access to old messages, that means it can be reset for anyone else too and the system is insecure.
There's always a tradeoff between convenience and security and considering facebook has the least technologically literate userbase of quite possibly any service, they'll never stray from the convenience side of the equation.
I'm going to change my WhatsApp status to "Quit WhatsApp, use Signal", but IDK if I can convince my family and a couple important people to use it (don't think so really). Which means I'll just...
I'm going to change my WhatsApp status to "Quit WhatsApp, use Signal", but IDK if I can convince my family and a couple important people to use it (don't think so really). Which means I'll just revert back to SMS if this thing happens.
Currently facing the same problem. Where I live you need to have either Facebook or Whatsapp in order to keep contact with people you know, there really is no other way unfortunately. I quit...
Currently facing the same problem. Where I live you need to have either Facebook or Whatsapp in order to keep contact with people you know, there really is no other way unfortunately. I quit Facebook years ago but I'm still stuck with Whatsapp.
The situation here is kind of similar to the US before Snowden leaked the NSA documents. People are either unaware or apathetic to their information being sold. So convincing people to move to apps like Signal is not going to be possible currently.
You're absolutely right: most people are either unaware or unconcerned. I can't really blame them either. I was able to get a couple of people to switch over to Signal recently, but that was only...
You're absolutely right: most people are either unaware or unconcerned. I can't really blame them either.
I was able to get a couple of people to switch over to Signal recently, but that was only because I was an uncompromising nag about it. Unfortunately, I don't think any of them like it like I do--they just put up with it on my behalf.
Even with very valid reasons to switch, the biggest hangup for everyone was convenience: why install another messenger, especially one that works with fewer contacts? We were coming from SMS/MMS, so I was trying to sell them not on privacy but simply on features: we can send video! Uncompressed gifs and photos! It has read receipts! You can send messages through WiFi! Oh and by the way, your carrier can't read your messages.
Unfortunately, none of that seemed to matter to them because of the necessary friction it creates by being a separate app. No matter how good Signal is (and it's very good), its a secondary app that hardly contacts anyone, which is a big step down from their main messenger that already contacts everyone. That's a tough sell.
That's really surprising to me - WhatsApp's entire product proposition (at least before reaching market saturation) is basically "SMS/MMS but better", and it netted them an enormous userbase. I'd...
That's really surprising to me - WhatsApp's entire product proposition (at least before reaching market saturation) is basically "SMS/MMS but better", and it netted them an enormous userbase. I'd understand not wanting to move to Signal from an equal app, but if you're still using SMS then group chats and WiFi support are a huge step up!
I don't really understand this. I have never used WhatsApp or signal and still use sms/mms for everything. Group chats work fine, even if adding someone to an existing chat isn't really possible....
I don't really understand this. I have never used WhatsApp or signal and still use sms/mms for everything. Group chats work fine, even if adding someone to an existing chat isn't really possible. There is not a (visible) message length limit any more. On any carrier that supports wifi calling, you can send sms over WiFi as well. So what benefit does WhatsApp/signal really provide, besides the obvious privacy benefits?
I'll admit that I made the switch probably 6-7 years ago, so it's possible that some of my reasons are a bit dated now. I didn't even know my network supported WiFi calling (and, by extension,...
I'll admit that I made the switch probably 6-7 years ago, so it's possible that some of my reasons are a bit dated now. I didn't even know my network supported WiFi calling (and, by extension, SMS), for example, because I haven't needed it for so long - but Google suggests that the one I use only allowed the Android/iOS native implementation to be used from 2017, so that's still a good 5 years or so that other apps would have had the upper hand for me (and anyone else on the same network!).
I suppose since SMS is just a carriage technology, a lot of features can be implemented at the application level, although that does risk confusion for users of different SMS apps. Since I've never really used it for large group chats, I'm not entirely sure how the receiving device can distinguish between a message direct from Alice to Bob compared to a message from Alice to a group that she and Bob are both members of. Is this something that happens seamlessly?
Your question did make me stop and think what actual tangible benefits there are, and a couple are things that I actually surprised myself with:
Cost, even nowadays. I just checked one of my main group chats and the current count is people in four different countries, which means steep per-message charges for everyone if it were SMS. Even more so back in the bad old days before unlimited plans, when even domestic plans would charge per message per recipient (and normally charge triple for image or video).
Compatibility. This one may well have changed by now, but in the early days MMS compatibility between different networks and devices was terrible. Getting an automated SMS with a link to a crappy proprietary hosting service to view the content in browser, for example, was a very common occurrence because somewhere along the chain one of the devices forgot that the other could receive the content in the standard MMS format.
Speed. On the rare occasions I still use it, SMS seems to take a minimum of 3-5 seconds to send, and increases linearly with multiple recipients. Not a huge delay, but easily enough to dampen the flow when six or seven people are fluidly chatting in real time.
File sizes. As I understand it, MMS is still limited to ~300kb per message - smallish albeit usable for photos, but crippling for video.
Receipts. I'm still ambivalent about read receipts (and they can be turned off), but the level below that (receipt receipts?) showing that the message safely reached the target device is an excellent reassurance, especially if the person on the other end was depending on you for something.
I did this a some years ago. After all this while I have one group chat on Signal, and the people in this group still use FB. I mostly use SMS and iMessage for communication and believe these are...
I did this a some years ago. After all this while I have one group chat on Signal, and the people in this group still use FB. I mostly use SMS and iMessage for communication and believe these are lesser evils than FB.
While I'd love to agree with you Signal in its current form is just to plain and unfriendly for the average user. Add to the mix that you still can't moderate group chats and can't even backup...
While I'd love to agree with you Signal in its current form is just to plain and unfriendly for the average user. Add to the mix that you still can't moderate group chats and can't even backup chat on iOS, I found Wire to be the better replacement for WhatsApp and so far managed to get more people to install wire than Signal.
That's interesting, I'd always considered Signal and WhatsApp almost identical - but I use the latter far more, and only talk to two or three people on Signal. The only issue I've noticed...
That's interesting, I'd always considered Signal and WhatsApp almost identical - but I use the latter far more, and only talk to two or three people on Signal. The only issue I've noticed personally is the Signal desktop application - it's pretty much unusably broken, at least for me (10+ minute load time, missing messages, unreliable sync between it and mobile), but the Android app has always been absolutely fine.
Any specifics you've found lacking on Signal and/or better on Wire?
Pro Wire: Multi-Account Support Independent instances for all devices Encrypted backups as a single file Can sign up with both phone number and email address Contra Signal: No backup option on iOS...
Pro Wire:
Multi-Account Support
Independent instances for all devices
Encrypted backups as a single file
Can sign up with both phone number and email address
Contra Signal:
No backup option on iOS
No group administration option
My only issue with Wire is that it saves quite some meta data so it's not on the same privacy level as Signal.
Also pro accounts are solely business oriented and therefore a bit awkward to set up for private use, which is a bummer if you want multi person video calls as they are pro only.
I'll have to check out Wire in more detail - it looks like it's trying to capture market share from Slack as much as from WhatsApp or Signal, so might be a good way to push my colleagues to...
I'll have to check out Wire in more detail - it looks like it's trying to capture market share from Slack as much as from WhatsApp or Signal, so might be a good way to push my colleagues to something more secure.
Great time to move to one of the dozens of literally identical competing apps. All you need is to convince your friends, at least those you write often but since it's mostly just a contact list...
Great time to move to one of the dozens of literally identical competing apps. All you need is to convince your friends, at least those you write often but since it's mostly just a contact list made up from phone numbers, that's way easier for WhatsApp than other services.
That’s gonna be extremely difficult here: everyone has whatsapp, and no one has any of those alternative apps. You may be able to convince your close friends, but will lose access to the large...
That’s gonna be extremely difficult here: everyone has whatsapp, and no one has any of those alternative apps. You may be able to convince your close friends, but will lose access to the large group chat where your entire university course is in and discusses things like what’s gonna be on the exam, or that the prof announced an important thing today in the lecture you didn’t visit.
You don't necessarily have to turn it into a big thing. I'm currently keeping WhatsApp, 2 of the people I write with the most switched to Telegram. I believe I could convince my girlfriend and my...
You don't necessarily have to turn it into a big thing. I'm currently keeping WhatsApp, 2 of the people I write with the most switched to Telegram. I believe I could convince my girlfriend and my parents to also install it. Then it's a matter of "oh, you're still using WhatsApp? I switched to Telegram", it's a matter of installing the app (2 minutes) and adding your friends' phone numbers from contacts.
Basically, I believe it's way easier to move towards a different messenger than its made out to be. There's certainly some inertia, but people who compare WhatsApp or even Instagram to facebook, just because they own the platforms, I believe miss the important difference: Facebook has always been about owning your life. These other, more specific chat and photo-blogging apps have way less of a "hook", they're way less connected. And it gives me hope that the facebook grip on private information might not be quite as strong as I feared. Teenagers aren't using facebook anymore, it's uncool, who would have thought? I've also seen Snapchat drop dead and be replaced by Instagram, just like that. I like how quick people are to switch. I definitely see it happening. And over the next 10 years, I could see facebook losing its relevancy. All it takes is some random startup doing one smart little variation on the formula and get some influencers on board.
I agree that it's usually not too bad to get individual people to switch, but (like @Adarain mentioned), getting everyone in entire large group-chats to switch will probably be impossible unless...
I agree that it's usually not too bad to get individual people to switch, but (like @Adarain mentioned), getting everyone in entire large group-chats to switch will probably be impossible unless WhatsApp does something extremely major to make everyone want to change.
For example, almost all of my wife's extended family is in a big group chat on WhatsApp that they use almost like a private Facebook—posting photos, planning events, etc. Trying to get 30+ people to switch to a new app for no easily-explainable benefit just wouldn't happen, especially since quite a few of them are older and probably wouldn't even be able to understand how to do it themselves. There will definitely still be a lot of inertia because of existing groups like that, especially in the countries where WhatsApp is practically the default way to communicate with each other.
FWIW, most of my friend circle is actually on Telegram, and whenever I make a new friend I encourage them to use Telegram instead of WhatsApp. I've had a 10% success rate with that.
FWIW, most of my friend circle is actually on Telegram, and whenever I make a new friend I encourage them to use Telegram instead of WhatsApp. I've had a 10% success rate with that.
Facebook won't stop until it faces prosecution. Expecting Zuckerberg to behave by himself is like expecting a 2-year-old not to eat a cupcake. He just can't help it. There's nothing new and...
Facebook won't stop until it faces prosecution. Expecting Zuckerberg to behave by himself is like expecting a 2-year-old not to eat a cupcake. He just can't help it. There's nothing new and revolutionary about that, just good old monopoly.
In the meantime, abandoning Facebooks' products is unfeasible for most people. I can easily go to Signal, but will I be able to convince my friends, family, and colleagues? Even my teachers use WhatsApp to organize projects and study groups (it's a terrible tool for that purpose, but what can I do?). Last time I tried to go off WhatsApp, I created a Git repo, a Google Drive folder and a Slack channel for a group assignment, and none of my colleagues even opened those links, choosing to communicate solely via WhatsApp. And those are software-engineering students! How many of us are in a position to dictate which apps our social groups must use?
I support this move to be honest, being able to message my irl friends who use whatsapp/instagram through fb messenger without having to sign up for those other apps sounds pretty convenient.
I support this move to be honest, being able to message my irl friends who use whatsapp/instagram through fb messenger without having to sign up for those other apps sounds pretty convenient.
Lol im in the complete opposite camp. I hope it is a setting you can disable at least, because I don't want to be messaged from fb at all. Even through whatsapp. If I won't be able to get everyone...
Lol im in the complete opposite camp.
I hope it is a setting you can disable at least, because I don't want to be messaged from fb at all.
Even through whatsapp.
If I won't be able to get everyone to switch though, so for now I'm stuck.
This is the optimal time to break up Facebook from WhatsApp and Instagram.
I wonder what this means for the encryption layers of WhatsApp.
I'm not sure how they expect to make this work with messenger. People expect to find all their messages on any device they log onto, but that just doesn't work with e2e encryption.
Could all of a user's devices share a private key between them? I'm trying to imagine a scheme where the key is stored on FB's servers, but is encrypted with the user's password. When they log in the private key is downloaded and decrypted, then used to sign outgoing messages.
Is that feasible?
Yeah, what you describe is used by various zero-access service providers.
The catch is that if the user forgets their password, they are boned and lose access to all data that was encrypted with the password. If the service provider has the ability to reset the password for the user while still giving access to old messages, that means it can be reset for anyone else too and the system is insecure.
There's always a tradeoff between convenience and security and considering facebook has the least technologically literate userbase of quite possibly any service, they'll never stray from the convenience side of the equation.
I'm going to take this opportunity to move to Signal and to try and convince friends and family to do the same.
I'm going to change my WhatsApp status to "Quit WhatsApp, use Signal", but IDK if I can convince my family and a couple important people to use it (don't think so really). Which means I'll just revert back to SMS if this thing happens.
Currently facing the same problem. Where I live you need to have either Facebook or Whatsapp in order to keep contact with people you know, there really is no other way unfortunately. I quit Facebook years ago but I'm still stuck with Whatsapp.
The situation here is kind of similar to the US before Snowden leaked the NSA documents. People are either unaware or apathetic to their information being sold. So convincing people to move to apps like Signal is not going to be possible currently.
You're absolutely right: most people are either unaware or unconcerned. I can't really blame them either.
I was able to get a couple of people to switch over to Signal recently, but that was only because I was an uncompromising nag about it. Unfortunately, I don't think any of them like it like I do--they just put up with it on my behalf.
Even with very valid reasons to switch, the biggest hangup for everyone was convenience: why install another messenger, especially one that works with fewer contacts? We were coming from SMS/MMS, so I was trying to sell them not on privacy but simply on features: we can send video! Uncompressed gifs and photos! It has read receipts! You can send messages through WiFi! Oh and by the way, your carrier can't read your messages.
Unfortunately, none of that seemed to matter to them because of the necessary friction it creates by being a separate app. No matter how good Signal is (and it's very good), its a secondary app that hardly contacts anyone, which is a big step down from their main messenger that already contacts everyone. That's a tough sell.
That's really surprising to me - WhatsApp's entire product proposition (at least before reaching market saturation) is basically "SMS/MMS but better", and it netted them an enormous userbase. I'd understand not wanting to move to Signal from an equal app, but if you're still using SMS then group chats and WiFi support are a huge step up!
I don't really understand this. I have never used WhatsApp or signal and still use sms/mms for everything. Group chats work fine, even if adding someone to an existing chat isn't really possible. There is not a (visible) message length limit any more. On any carrier that supports wifi calling, you can send sms over WiFi as well. So what benefit does WhatsApp/signal really provide, besides the obvious privacy benefits?
I'll admit that I made the switch probably 6-7 years ago, so it's possible that some of my reasons are a bit dated now. I didn't even know my network supported WiFi calling (and, by extension, SMS), for example, because I haven't needed it for so long - but Google suggests that the one I use only allowed the Android/iOS native implementation to be used from 2017, so that's still a good 5 years or so that other apps would have had the upper hand for me (and anyone else on the same network!).
I suppose since SMS is just a carriage technology, a lot of features can be implemented at the application level, although that does risk confusion for users of different SMS apps. Since I've never really used it for large group chats, I'm not entirely sure how the receiving device can distinguish between a message direct from Alice to Bob compared to a message from Alice to a group that she and Bob are both members of. Is this something that happens seamlessly?
Your question did make me stop and think what actual tangible benefits there are, and a couple are things that I actually surprised myself with:
Cost, even nowadays. I just checked one of my main group chats and the current count is people in four different countries, which means steep per-message charges for everyone if it were SMS. Even more so back in the bad old days before unlimited plans, when even domestic plans would charge per message per recipient (and normally charge triple for image or video).
Compatibility. This one may well have changed by now, but in the early days MMS compatibility between different networks and devices was terrible. Getting an automated SMS with a link to a crappy proprietary hosting service to view the content in browser, for example, was a very common occurrence because somewhere along the chain one of the devices forgot that the other could receive the content in the standard MMS format.
Speed. On the rare occasions I still use it, SMS seems to take a minimum of 3-5 seconds to send, and increases linearly with multiple recipients. Not a huge delay, but easily enough to dampen the flow when six or seven people are fluidly chatting in real time.
File sizes. As I understand it, MMS is still limited to ~300kb per message - smallish albeit usable for photos, but crippling for video.
Receipts. I'm still ambivalent about read receipts (and they can be turned off), but the level below that (receipt receipts?) showing that the message safely reached the target device is an excellent reassurance, especially if the person on the other end was depending on you for something.
I did this a some years ago. After all this while I have one group chat on Signal, and the people in this group still use FB. I mostly use SMS and iMessage for communication and believe these are lesser evils than FB.
While I'd love to agree with you Signal in its current form is just to plain and unfriendly for the average user. Add to the mix that you still can't moderate group chats and can't even backup chat on iOS, I found Wire to be the better replacement for WhatsApp and so far managed to get more people to install wire than Signal.
That's interesting, I'd always considered Signal and WhatsApp almost identical - but I use the latter far more, and only talk to two or three people on Signal. The only issue I've noticed personally is the Signal desktop application - it's pretty much unusably broken, at least for me (10+ minute load time, missing messages, unreliable sync between it and mobile), but the Android app has always been absolutely fine.
Any specifics you've found lacking on Signal and/or better on Wire?
Pro Wire:
Multi-Account Support
Independent instances for all devices
Encrypted backups as a single file
Can sign up with both phone number and email address
Contra Signal:
No backup option on iOS
No group administration option
Obviously all parts of Wire are open source
My only issue with Wire is that it saves quite some meta data so it's not on the same privacy level as Signal.
Also pro accounts are solely business oriented and therefore a bit awkward to set up for private use, which is a bummer if you want multi person video calls as they are pro only.
I'll have to check out Wire in more detail - it looks like it's trying to capture market share from Slack as much as from WhatsApp or Signal, so might be a good way to push my colleagues to something more secure.
Great time to move to one of the dozens of literally identical competing apps. All you need is to convince your friends, at least those you write often but since it's mostly just a contact list made up from phone numbers, that's way easier for WhatsApp than other services.
That’s gonna be extremely difficult here: everyone has whatsapp, and no one has any of those alternative apps. You may be able to convince your close friends, but will lose access to the large group chat where your entire university course is in and discusses things like what’s gonna be on the exam, or that the prof announced an important thing today in the lecture you didn’t visit.
You don't necessarily have to turn it into a big thing. I'm currently keeping WhatsApp, 2 of the people I write with the most switched to Telegram. I believe I could convince my girlfriend and my parents to also install it. Then it's a matter of "oh, you're still using WhatsApp? I switched to Telegram", it's a matter of installing the app (2 minutes) and adding your friends' phone numbers from contacts.
Basically, I believe it's way easier to move towards a different messenger than its made out to be. There's certainly some inertia, but people who compare WhatsApp or even Instagram to facebook, just because they own the platforms, I believe miss the important difference: Facebook has always been about owning your life. These other, more specific chat and photo-blogging apps have way less of a "hook", they're way less connected. And it gives me hope that the facebook grip on private information might not be quite as strong as I feared. Teenagers aren't using facebook anymore, it's uncool, who would have thought? I've also seen Snapchat drop dead and be replaced by Instagram, just like that. I like how quick people are to switch. I definitely see it happening. And over the next 10 years, I could see facebook losing its relevancy. All it takes is some random startup doing one smart little variation on the formula and get some influencers on board.
I agree that it's usually not too bad to get individual people to switch, but (like @Adarain mentioned), getting everyone in entire large group-chats to switch will probably be impossible unless WhatsApp does something extremely major to make everyone want to change.
For example, almost all of my wife's extended family is in a big group chat on WhatsApp that they use almost like a private Facebook—posting photos, planning events, etc. Trying to get 30+ people to switch to a new app for no easily-explainable benefit just wouldn't happen, especially since quite a few of them are older and probably wouldn't even be able to understand how to do it themselves. There will definitely still be a lot of inertia because of existing groups like that, especially in the countries where WhatsApp is practically the default way to communicate with each other.
FWIW, most of my friend circle is actually on Telegram, and whenever I make a new friend I encourage them to use Telegram instead of WhatsApp. I've had a 10% success rate with that.
Facebook won't stop until it faces prosecution. Expecting Zuckerberg to behave by himself is like expecting a 2-year-old not to eat a cupcake. He just can't help it. There's nothing new and revolutionary about that, just good old monopoly.
In the meantime, abandoning Facebooks' products is unfeasible for most people. I can easily go to Signal, but will I be able to convince my friends, family, and colleagues? Even my teachers use WhatsApp to organize projects and study groups (it's a terrible tool for that purpose, but what can I do?). Last time I tried to go off WhatsApp, I created a Git repo, a Google Drive folder and a Slack channel for a group assignment, and none of my colleagues even opened those links, choosing to communicate solely via WhatsApp. And those are software-engineering students! How many of us are in a position to dictate which apps our social groups must use?
I support this move to be honest, being able to message my irl friends who use whatsapp/instagram through fb messenger without having to sign up for those other apps sounds pretty convenient.
Lol im in the complete opposite camp.
I hope it is a setting you can disable at least, because I don't want to be messaged from fb at all.
Even through whatsapp.
If I won't be able to get everyone to switch though, so for now I'm stuck.