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Comment by aryaneja | Hacker News Reader

You seem to have written a very misleading comment. Apple is offering privacy minded folks two options:

1. Don't turn on iCloud Backups and receive E2EE on your messages 2. Turn on iCloud Backups AND advanced data protection and recieve E2EE on your messages

This is not some kind of nefarious plan on their end. Any user service will have a vulnerability on the user end of back-ups. For instance, Whatsapp backups will also have their keys available to Apple/Google. They need to offer this as for most users, the risk of losing their whole digital lives because they forgot their passwords outweights E2EE. For users who find that important, they have the two options listed above. Sounds like an appropriate trade-off to me.

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I was not mislead by that comment. It was clear that most people have their messages accessible to Apple, which is what the article also talks about - how privacy of "blue bubble" messages is at the center of this.

There are ways to opt out. But that's for the margin of people who worry about these things. So what that comment said is very relevant and accurate.

iPhones with iCloud backup enabled without ADP are almost certainly the majority. I believe this is essentially the default configuration. Even if you disable backups or enable ADP Apple almost certainly still has most of your messages from the other end of the conversation. It is false advertising to claim your service is E2EE without any disclaimer when in reality you collect the keys to the majority of messages and decrypt them at the request of law enforcement.

I have addressed your concern in my comment

> They need to offer this as for most users, the risk of losing their whole digital lives because they forgot their passwords outweights E2EE.

There is no clear trade-off that is an option.

"I can't imagine a way for this feature we advertised to not suck" is not an excuse for false advertising! But there is a way to do better. Google's Android backup is E2EE by default. It does not require remembering a long password. All it requires is your phone unlock code, which you normally enter at least once per day and are extremely unlikely to forget. This is actually how Apple's works too, when ADP is enabled. Either it should be enabled by default or Apple should stop claiming iMessage is E2EE.

Just because WhatsApp does it too, doesn't make it right.

These apps are not e2ee if almost every user has in effect encryption disabled.

Which app would qualify in your case? Signal suffers from the same client-side problem.

Matrix also provides the ability to back up keys in the server, but you select a separate passphrase for encrypting them before they're uploaded.

(Yes, it would be nice if the user didn't need two passphrases for this use, but Matrix cannot safely revert to key derivation because client could accidentally leak the master password to the server due to existing implementations.)

Don't know why you got downvoted, it's a very good question.

I've been using matrix. It's e2ee and multiple client sessions seem to be working just fine, they all sync without problems.

not by default, which is a massive difference.

I am not sure what the answer is here. What you are arguing for will hurt regular users who will lose their digital lives if they lose their passwords.

Signal will be backed-up on iCloud _by default_ and client side will be an issue.

> Signal will be backed-up on iCloud _by default_

No, it absolutely is not. It seems like you don't have a good understanding of how actual E2EE systems work.

"lose their digital lives" is hyperbolic emotive language. We're talking about a loss of chat history, not the death of people. Lots of people lose their chat histories all the time, it hurts but people get over it.

> Apple is offering privacy minded folks two options

Here is the explanation why it's completely impractical and therefore doesn't provide actual privacy, along with other anti-privacy configurations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37875370

Sounds like you're just confirming Apple tries very hard to make sure it's not E2EE.

Turning on advanced data protection is not hard.

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