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Comment by Mistletoe | Hacker News Reader

Just explain what end to end encryption means. People are starting to get it and don’t want companies able to read their messages.

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My Signal experience: ex gf in college asks what app I’m using to text. Tell her it’s Signal, E2EE, messages are only stored on her phone and nobody else can read them. She says cool and downloads the app. Four months later her phone breaks.

“Hey subjectsigma I got my new phone today. Where are all my messages?”

“… Do you have your old phone? That’s the only place they are.”

“No? Last time I got a new phone WhatsApp moved my messages over, and WA is E2EE so I thought it worked the same way.”

“Nope if you don’t have a backup or your old phone they’re gone. Sorry.”

“This is bullshit. Why does anyone use Signal. I can’t believe it deleted all my messages. I’m uninstalling it. Etc etc.”

We have a long way to go, my friend.

It only works for WhatsApp if you have Backup to Google activated[1]. I once tried to work with backuped files from my old phone and it didn't work. (Older tutorials indicated that it once worked, though.)

[1] There was a time WhatsApp had a nag-screen if you hadn't Backup to Google activated. So I guess most people would have eventually caved.

That nag-screen is still there, it pops up roughly every three months for me (though not on my primary phone, Whatsapp won't get anywhere near that one).

I don’t understand why people need old messages so badly. If they disappeared it would be fine with me. I set my iPhone messages to auto delete after a few months to save space and it works fine. A text is ephemeral, if I need to save something I use email.

Isn’t WhatsApp end-to-end encrypted?

I thought they recorded the metadata - who talks to who and when. (For the uninitiated, that is as valuable or more valuable than the message contents.)

you also send them your contacts in plaintext so you can find who's also on WhatsApp; signal doesn't

Yes it is, they actually use the signal protocol,[0] but they collect metadata which Signal supposedly doesn't (you can't really know)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol#:~:text=Severa...

Signal doesn't collect that data, but you have no reason to trust me on it.

Look at what data they can provide to governments when compelled by law: https://signal.org/bigbrother/

https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/v7tsou/is_whatsapp...

It seems to be but there is more to it than that.

Nobody cares about this unless they deal drugs or something.

What some people care about is not giving all their private conversations to masculine energy zuck - but don't expect any major wins.

Awful shortsighted and uninformed viewpoint that has been beaten into the ground ad nauseum.

Read a couple books. Privacy is a precondition to democracy.

It isn't a viewpoint. It's a fact. I'm using signal for almost a decade now and only managed to get a dozen or so people to use it in any capacity. Most keep using whatsapp as their primary method of communication anyway.

Meanwhile, I have been using Signal since the TextSecure days, too, and practically all my contacts are using it these days.

Good for you, tell us how you did it!

>Read a couple books

Maybe you should? It might help improve your reading comprehension. The person you're responding to said that most normal people don't care enough to switch to a vastly less popular app, which is obviously true.

What books would you recommend, that proof that connection?

"Privacy is a precondition to democracy"

How would you convert an autocracy into a democracy without secrecy? There are no peaceful means so you have to plot.

Secrecy and privacy is not really the same concept.

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