WhatsApp

Zuckerberg Plans to Integrate WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger →

January 26, 2019 · 00:29

Mike Isaac, writing for The New York Times:

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s chief executive, plans to integrate the social network’s messaging services — WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger — asserting his control over the company’s sprawling divisions at a time when its business has been battered by scandal.

The services will continue to operate as stand-alone apps, but their underlying technical infrastructure will be unified, said four people involved in the effort. That will bring together three of the world’s largest messaging networks, which between them have more than 2.6 billion users, allowing people to communicate across the platforms for the first time.

Mark Zuckerberg is the worst thing that could have ever happened to Instagram. I deleted Instagram’s app from my iPhone a few weeks ago because I was not comfortable using any Facebook product anymore. They have shown time and time again that they don’t care about privacy or even have the basic decency to apologize to their users. Time to finally say goodbye.

WhatsApp and Facebook — A Massive Culture Clash Over Encryption →

May 1, 2018 · 09:08

Elizabeth Dwoskin, writing for The Washington Post:

The WhatsApp co-founders were also big believers in privacy. They took pains to collect as little data as possible from their users, requiring only phone numbers and putting them at odds with data-hungry Facebook. At the time of the acquisition, Koum and Acton said Facebook had assured them that WhatsApp could remain an independent service and would not share its data with Facebook […]

Another point of disagreement was over WhatsApp’s encryption. In 2016, WhatsApp added end-to-end encryption, a security feature that scrambles people’s messages so that outsiders, including WhatsApp’s owners, can’t read them. Facebook executives wanted to make it easier for businesses to use its tools, and WhatsApp executives believed that doing so would require some weakening of its encryption.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg don’t know when to stop.

March 21, 2018 · 12:51

I started deleting all of Facebook content today, using a script. After all my data is erased, which I have no clue how long it will take, I will proceed to delete my account.

Instagram and WhatsApp will be next. Sadly.

UK Government Renews Calls for WhatsApp Backdoor After London Attack →

March 27, 2017 · 12:13

James Vincent:

Following last week’s terrorist attack in London, the UK government has renewed a familiar campaign against digital encryption. Echoing criticisms made in 2015 by then prime minister David Cameron after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris, UK home secretary Amber Rudd this weekend described the government’s inability to read messages on end-to-end encrypted messaging apps as “completely unacceptable.”

And so it begins… again. (Sigh.)

WhatsApp Just Switched on Encryption →

April 6, 2016 · 21:24

Cade Metz:

This means that if any group of people uses the latest version of WhatsApp—whether that group spans two people or ten—the service will encrypt all messages, phone calls, photos, and videos moving among them. And that’s true on any phone that runs the app, from iPhones to Android phones to Windows phones to old school Nokia flip phones. With end-to-end encryption in place, not even WhatsApp’s employees can read the data that’s sent across its network. In other words, WhatsApp has no way of complying with a court order demanding access to the content of any message, phone call, photo, or video traveling through its service. Like Apple, WhatsApp is, in practice, stonewalling the federal government, but it’s doing so on a larger front—one that spans roughly a billion devices.

I can’t help but wonder if/when encryption will be illegal in the United States, UK, and France — these three countries seem to be the ones who want it gone most. It should of course never come to that. And I truly hope it doesn’t.

Also: Wired’s title is completely baffling. We should never forget about the Apple vs. FBI kerfuffle.

Facebook, Google and WhatsApp Plan to Increase Encryption of User Data →

March 14, 2016 · 20:38

Danny Yadron:

Silicon Valley’s leading companies – including Facebook, Google and Snapchat – are working on their own increased privacy technology as Apple fights the US government over encryption, the Guardian has learned.

The projects could antagonize authorities just as much as Apple’s more secure iPhones, which are currently at the center of the San Bernardino shooting investigation. They also indicate the industry may be willing to back up their public support for Apple with concrete action.

Within weeks, Facebook’s messaging service WhatsApp plans to expand its secure messaging service so that voice calls are also encrypted, in addition to its existing privacy features. The service has some one billion monthly users. Facebook is also considering beefing up security of its own Messenger tool.

Snapchat, the popular ephemeral messaging service, is also working on a secure messaging system and Google is exploring extra uses for the technology behind a long-in-the-works encrypted email project.

At this point in time I would like to see more action from the other tech companies — this is obviously a delicate situation, but too much is at stake.

WhatsApp Encryption Targeted by DOJ →

March 13, 2016 · 10:35

Matt Apuzzo:

But in late 2014, the company said that it would begin adding sophisticated encoding, known as end-to-end encryption, to its systems. Only the intended recipients would be able to read the messages.

“WhatsApp cannot provide information we do not have,” the company said this month when Brazilian police arrested a Facebook executive after the company failed to turn over information about a customer who was the subject of a drug trafficking investigation.

The iPhone case, which revolves around whether Apple can be forced to help the F.B.I. unlock a phone used by one of the killers in last year’s San Bernardino, Calif., massacre, has received worldwide attention for the precedent it might set. But to many in law enforcement, disputes like the one with WhatsApp are of far greater concern.

For more than a half-century, the Justice Department has relied on wiretaps as a fundamental crime-fighting tool. To some in law enforcement, if companies like WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram can design unbreakable encryption, then the future of wiretapping is in doubt.