WhatsApp Chats Will Soon Work with Other Encrypted Messaging Apps | Hacker News Reader

WhatsApp Chats Will Soon Work with Other Encrypted Messaging Apps

wired.com

30 pointsnolist_policy11 comments

It's too bad that it seems like interoperability will only be for direct messages, and group chat support "will come in the future". There are a couple of groups I haven't managed to move to Signal. I guess I'll continue to bridge WhatsApp and Matrix so that I can avoid having WhatsApp installed on my main phone

https://archive.is/bceQp

Isn't WA based on Signal protocol anyway?

Also, will I be able to uninstall WA and use Signal to talk to WA contacts?

I really hope I can ditch WA in the future

Isn't WhatsApp using some sort of XMPP sent over Signal Protocol[1]? Anyway, seems like Signal is not interested for now[2].

[1] https://www.cometchat.com/blog/whatsapps-architecture-and-sy...

[2] https://www.androidpolice.com/signal-threema-nothing-to-do-w...

The “Signal protocol” only specifies how encryption is performed, but WhatsApp and Signal have very different protocols for actually transmitting the encrypted messages (I think WhatsApp was at one point based on XMPP, vs Signal is a bunch of protobuf blobs over a websocket)

Ever since Whatsapp switched to E2E, older conversations seem to get lost if none of the devices has it stored. Especially with older videos / pictures being shared, the older they get sooner they disappear.

Is this somehow bad? You own your data. If you are concerned about it getting lost, back it up: the app even supports automating this for you (backing up to your Google Drive or iCloud, and even does it in a way that is also encrypted).

> Is this somehow bad? You own your data.

It's not a question about owning the data, it's about data loss. What's the point with having conversations if you cannot rely on them being persistent throughout the history?

> If you are concerned about it getting lost, back it up: the app even supports automating this for you (backing up to your Google Drive or iCloud

This is only supported on mobile devices I believe? But sure, I guess I have to backup all my convos every week or so?

WA is already e2e encrypted. They mostly use the metadatas to extract information about you. ex: Last person you spoke to each night ? Might be your girlfriend / boyfriend. (obviously it's not perfect as if you live together)

I trust Signal to not abuse of these metadatas, but if I can't be sure that my message sent on signal are going to be read on the signal app. Isn't it worst ?

You can already read Signal messages using the API directly, if you want to, so depending on how serious you take that issue, it has never been something you could be "sure" of.

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