logoalt Hacker News

adjejmxbdjdntoday at 2:19 PM1 replyview on HN

Group chats are openly not E2E encrypted.

Even personal chats are publicly not E2E encrypted.

There are other insidious ways you can publicly and openly end E2E encryption (I think backups might do that).

Essentially, while WhatsApp may not be lying their default 1 to 1 chats are E2E encrypted, it makes sense to use it as if it weren’t because it’s so easy to disable it even with their publicly disclosed information.


Replies

Tepixtoday at 2:32 PM

Wrong. Both WhatsApp and Signal group chats are E2EE.

Telegram group chats are not. Even 1on1 chats aren‘t E2EE on Telegram by default.

Also, reporting is an issue: If a member of the group "Reports" a message to WhatsApp, a copy of the recent messages in that chat is decrypted and sent to WhatsApp for review to check for terms-of-service violations.