> Facebook purchasing Whatsapp, another service that formerly stressed encryption, resulted in things like plaintext backups of your texts on Facebook servers being aggressively promoted as soon as you loaded the app.
Ia that the case? AFAIK WhatsApp gained proper end to end encryption after being bought by Facebook and pushes for backups to Google (and maybe iCloud?) servers.
Wikipedia writes:
> WhatsApp was initially criticized for its lack of encryption, sending information as plaintext. Encryption was first added in May 2012. In 2016, WhatsApp was widely praised for the addition of end-to-end encryption
Whatsapp announced encryption to the world in 2012. OWS helped secure their app further after the 2014 acquisition by FB, but encryption was something stressed by Koum and Acton from the get-go. Integration of E2EE into Whatsapp/FB Messaging is one of the few examples of Zuck being on the right side of things.
Long term it ended up pretty good, with Koum and Acton taking their acquisition money bags and pouring them into FOSS projects like FreeBSD and the Signal Foundation. Maybe malgorithms will do the same.
> pushes for backups to Google (and maybe iCloud?) servers.
Yeah, I was incorrect. They backup to Google servers. Not sure if that's better or worse. :)
Since then, FB has offered willingness to cooperate with foreign governments to break encryption. I guess we will see what happens with the EARN IT Act.
Ia that the case? AFAIK WhatsApp gained proper end to end encryption after being bought by Facebook and pushes for backups to Google (and maybe iCloud?) servers.
Wikipedia writes:
> WhatsApp was initially criticized for its lack of encryption, sending information as plaintext. Encryption was first added in May 2012. In 2016, WhatsApp was widely praised for the addition of end-to-end encryption
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp