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Comment by auggierose | Hacker News Reader

So would you say that according to their terms of use they could just upload my messages to their servers for data-mining?

If you would say so, you would be wrong: https://faq.whatsapp.com/general/security-and-privacy/end-to...

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Remember when WhatsApp were all "Yes, we're being bought by Facebook, but we're going to preserve your privacy"? https://blog.whatsapp.com/setting-the-record-straight

At some point, words become meaningless platitudes that are simply invalidated by the next big ToS update. Facebook have a major incentive in being able to read our messages, so I fully expect them to march in the direction of figuring out how to sell the the walkback of e2e in the future. It'll be dressed up as for our "safety" or so that their "partners" can add some sort of "value", but it will come.

i think he was saying that there is nothing preventing fb from having the wa-client piggyback the content of the messages back to them and call "oops" if found out.

also the issue of device-backups containing the unecrypted message history which is beeing shared from google to facebook.

Your first point is against their terms of use. So, that's preventing them to do something like that. But sure, if you think that Facebook will break the law here, switch.

For your second point, how would Google ever get my device backup? I guess if you are using Android and worried about your privacy, what you should switch is not your messenger app, but your OS.

agreed i sound a bit pessimistic here, but companies regularly show that the only thing that matters is the bottom line, so i stand by the assertation that breaking the law/eula is not really a question of ethics.

second point; you and i may not be using android and google backup, a vast majority does.

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