WhatsHerBucketU.S. officials urge Americans to use encrypted apps amid unprecedented cyberattack
circuitfarmerIt’s probably also good practice to assume that not all encrypted apps are created equal, too. Google’s RCS messaging, for example, says “end-to-end encrypted”, which sounds like it would be a direct and equal competitor to something like Signal. But Google regularly makes money off of your personal data. It does not behoove a company like Google to protect your data.
Start assuming every corporation is evil. At worst you lose some time getting educated on options.
mosiacmangoEnd to end is end to end. Its either “the devices sign the messages with keys that never leave the the device so no 3rd party can ever compromise them” or it’s not.
Signal is a more trustworthy org, but google isn’t going to fuck around with this service to make money. They make their money off you by keeping you in the google ecosystem and data harvesting elsewhere.
google isn’t going to fuck around with this service to make money
Your honor, I would like to submit Exhibit A, Google Chrome “Enhanced Privacy”.
How To Turn Off Google’s “Privacy Sandbox” Ad Tracking—and Why You Should
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Thats a different tech. End to end is cut and dry how it works. If you do anything to data mine it, it’s not end to end anymore.
Only the users involved in end to end can access the data in that chat. Everyone else sees encrypted data, i.e noise. If there are any backdoors or any methods to pull data out, you can’t bill it as end to end.
You are suggesting that “end-to-end” is some kind of legally codified phrase. It just isn’t. If Google were to steal data from a system claiming to be end-to-end encrypted, no one would be surprised.
I think your point is: if that were the case, the messages wouldn’t have been end-to-end encrypted, by definition. Which is fine. I’m saying we shouldn’t trust a giant corporation making money off of selling personal data that it actually is end-to-end encrypted.
By the same token, don’t trust Microsoft when they say Windows is secure.
Its a specific, technical phrase that means one thing only, and yes, googles RCS meets that standard:
support.google.com/messages/answer/10262381?hl=en
How end-to-end encryption works
When you use the Google Messages app to send end-to-end encrypted messages, all chats, including their text and any files or media, are encrypted as the data travels between devices. Encryption converts data into scrambled text. The unreadable text can only be decoded with a secret key.
The secret key is a number that’s:
Created on your device and the device you message. It exists only on these two devices.
Not shared with Google, anyone else, or other devices.
Generated again for each message.
Deleted from the sender’s device when the encrypted message is created, and deleted from the receiver’s device when the message is decrypted.
Neither Google or other third parties can read end-to-end encrypted messages because they don’t have the key.
They have more technical information here if you want to deep dive about the literal implementation.
You shouldn’t trust any corporation, but needless FUD detracts from their actual issues.
Even if we assume they don’t have a backdoor (which is probably accurate), they can still exfiltrate any data they want through Google Play services after it’s decrypted.
They’re an ad company, so they have a vested interest in doing that. So I don’t trust them. If they make it FOSS and not rely on Google Play services, I might trust them, but I’d probably use a fork instead.