Their history approach is interesting, supporting key rotations as well.
However, metadata is still un-encrypted, same as on whatsapp. Meta knows who you talk to, and when - this is juicy enough for both ad-targeting, and government surveillance.
However, metadata is still un-encrypted, same as on whatsapp. Meta knows who you talk to, and when - this is juicy enough for both ad-targeting, and government surveillance.
Metadata is still data!
Let's imagine a situation where all the messages from Meta's platforms are leaked. On other scenario message content is plaintext, but senders, receivers, timestamps and locations are encrypted (on top of app usage behaviour).
On the other scenario, all the contents are encrypted, but the metadata is public.
We would know to whom everyone, in anytime, in any location, in which interval has talked to.
Which is more dangerous or damaging?
I’ll start first off the top of my head:
- The (real) identity of you and every person you talk to
- The time of the messages
- The location they were sent from
- The specific device used to send them
- A sentiment analysis: were the messages positive? Negative? Depressed? Anxious? Sarcastic?
- A description of the pictures that were sent (for example by an on-device AI model)
- A transcript of any voice memos/videos
Read receipts.
User is typing indicators.
And if you’re sending media they have on record that means they can look up the exact same media and still have it qualified as metadata