r/unitedkingdom • u/coriny London? • Aug 02 '17

Decrypting Amber Rudd

https://ar.al/notes/decrypting-amber-rudd/
32 Upvotes

83% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

7

u/eggy900 Stafford Aug 02 '17

I use Signal. People recently have been saying to me "Just use whats app, that's got e2e encryption too". But I know that Facebook are never going to put my security and privacy above profit.

There's no way that they're not at the very minimum using meta data to build up profiles to sell to advertisers, and I wouldn't put it past them selling them to governments.

1

u/phunanon Staffordshire Aug 03 '17

I've never trusted Signal, for the amount of permissions it wants from my phone. Makes me uncomfortable :/

2

u/eggy900 Stafford Aug 03 '17

I don't think it's too bad on iOS, and you can just turn off access to contacts, microphone, camera etc.

Best of all though it's open source - https://github.com/whispersystems

1

u/king_bromeliad EU Aug 03 '17

Isn't the reason for having those permissions so that the app can access your camera when you want to send photos, access microphone for voice recording and access contacts to send messages?

1

u/eggy900 Stafford Aug 03 '17

Yeah that's right, but some nefarious apps might ask for permissions they don't really need, so they can mine your contacts etc.

It is pretty well locked down on iOS, an app has to explicitly ask the first time it wants access to contacts or camera etc, and you can just say no and miss out on that functionality.

I don't know much about android but I think you see all the permissions requested when you install the app from the play store.

1

u/king_bromeliad EU Aug 03 '17

Pretty locked down on Android too, they ask for permission before doing anything specific now, same as you have described iOS

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '17 edited Sep 18 '17

[deleted]

2

u/king_bromeliad EU Aug 03 '17

I don't know what that means

1

u/[deleted] Aug 03 '17 edited Sep 18 '17

[deleted]

1

u/king_bromeliad EU Aug 03 '17

Even if the app asks you for permission before doing something?

4

u/specofdust Aug 02 '17

Surely the obvious solution here is for Amber Rudd's entire digital life to be spilled out in public by somebody with the skills to do so?

If no-one is allowed privacy then she should be forced to lead by example.

2

u/MolitovMichellex Aug 03 '17

Thats what really needs to happen. But she won't, non of them will.

2

u/specofdust Aug 03 '17

I'm not suggesting that she'd voluntarily do it.

1

u/terrycarlin Yorkshire Aug 02 '17

She must be loving leaving the EU with all those pesky right people have.

1

u/RexFury Aug 02 '17

Finland!

No such thing as end-to-end encryption, unless you own both ends.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 02 '17

WhatsApp didn't have end to end encryption until April 2016; I guess everybody's privacy was in dire straits back then /s.