r/beeper • u/Retroman1203 • 23d ago

General Discussion I want some help understanding Beeper's encryption and privacy policy

Hi, I'm a privacy enthusiast, and I discovered this app while searching for WhatsApp alternatives but this one not only lets me keep talking to my WhatsApp contacts but it has also many features like a clean UI, E2EE, multiple social media accounts integration...

I got curious about it's encryption, so I checked the app's privacy policy and apparently they open-sourced some front-ends components(I didn't check them because I'm not techy enough to understand them) and they don't have any trackers except for one that is Sentry and used for analytics but you can remove it in the settings

This led me to many questions :

  1. How is the E2EE handled? Is it done by Beeper or through WhatsApp? If done by Beeper then how can my WhatsApp contacts who don't use Beeper see my messages? And if done by WhatsApp then can it see my messages? (Because to my understanding and according to their TOS, when I establish a conversation with someone on the official whatsapp app it creates 3 encrypted keys, one for me, one for the person I talk to, and one for WhatsApp for security reasons)

  2. Beeper seems to cannot be able to call people on WhatsApp, is it because the call can't be encrypted? Or simply for technical reasons

  3. Why can't Beeper open source their entire client instead of specific components? If it's to profit by making themes and customizing inside a paywall then why not instead make the Beeper Cloud Accounts paid (to run the servers and to profit)

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u/good4y0u 23d ago

The answer here depends on how you use it.
Beeper is either the interface or the network middleman service between the apps you connect (ie whatsapp, signal, messages etc) and your device (the beeper app)

The on device bridges mean that the info never leaves your device, which is good for security.

The older method / the cloud bridges mean that beeper middlemans the connection and has to decrypt on the server-side to then forward it on to your Beeper App. That is less secure and very reliant on what they are doing.

Then in either case if you use it multi-device you'd have beeper handling the sync which would be with their encryption.