As evidence, the lawsuit cites unnamed “courageous whistleblowers” who allege that WhatsApp and Meta employees can request to view a user’s messages through a simple process, thus bypassing the app’s end-to-end encryption. “A worker need only send a ‘task’ (i.e., request via Meta’s internal system) to a Meta engineer with an explanation that they need access to WhatsApp messages for their job,” the lawsuit claims. “The Meta engineering team will then grant access – often without any scrutiny at all – and the worker’s workstation will then have a new window or widget available that can pull up any WhatsApp user’s messages based on the user’s User ID number, which is unique to a user but identical across all Meta products.”
“Once the Meta worker has this access, they can read users’ messages by opening the widget; no separate decryption step is required,” the 51-page complaint adds. “The WhatsApp messages appear in widgets commingled with widgets containing messages from unencrypted sources. Messages appear almost as soon as they are communicated – essentially, in real-time. Moreover, access is unlimited in temporal scope, with Meta workers able to access messages from the time users first activated their accounts, including those messages users believe they have deleted.” The lawsuit does not provide any technical details to back up the rather sensational claims.
The biggest news is that Slashdot is still alive.
+5 insightful
I have a 6-digit ID with an Excellent karma, it hasn’t been used for years. How much can you offer? It must be very valuable.
DUH
No if this is proven it would be a real scandal and would bring a lot of users to better alternatives.
If it’s false that’s good too, since then WA has e2e encryption
Assume the same for Telegram and pretty much any chat platform that controls your private keys.
Telegram was obvious from the beginning since they created their own cipher which is the stupidest idea in the whole universe.
The telegram was clear as a day they announced cooperation with the Russian government and they unblocked it. That was way before the whole France fiasco, I doubt they’re actually giving up the keys to France. I’m from East and many say that Telegram now is essentially a Russian weapon. Surveillance at home, total free reign (sell drugs, spread CP, etc.) in west.
If you’re American, I believe Telegram is actually safer than Whatsapp, as long as you can ignore the dirty side of it (surface deep web?), hence why Europe wants it under control
Well if I can’t trust Meta with my information, who CAN I trust
Me
Oh okay. My location is 55.752121, 37.617664, my full name is Jeremy, and my password is hunter9. I trust you not to tell this to anybody
Your secret is safe with us and our 36,893 affiliates.
So, is it basically treating every message as a “group” message where it sends it to some system WhatsApp account and then also to your intended receiver? This is what I’m assuming based on them supposedly being able to see deleted messages. Also would let them say it’s technically still “E2EE” since it’s indeed E2EE to your receiver, but it’s also E2EE to them as well.
Ah yes, good old E2E AWA3E.
“End to end, and we are also an end”.
The E is for “Everyone”
