> Attaullah Baig, who served as head of security for WhatsApp from 2021 to 2025, claims that approximately 1,500 engineers had unrestricted access to user data without proper oversight, potentially violating a US government order that imposed a $5bn penalty on the company in 2020.
If it results in a new billion-dollar penalty, maybe it would've saved money to move him quietly to a cushy rest-and-vest advisory position, in which he's not allowed to see, do, or say anything.
> In his whistleblower complaint, Baig is requesting reinstatement, [...]
I don't understand the "reinstatement" part. Does he actually want to go back, and think that it wouldn't be a toxic dynamic?
(He already talked about retaliation. And then by going public the way he did, I'd think he burned that bridge, salted the earth for a mile around bridge, and then nuked the entire metro area from orbit.)
Or is "reinstatement" simply something the lawyers just have to ask for, to ostensibly make him whole, but they actually neither want nor expect that?
United857 · 2h ago
That's rather surprising about the accessing user data bit. When I was at Meta, the quickest way to get fired as an engineer was to access user data/accounts without permission or business reason. Everything was logged/audited down to the database level. Can't imagine that changing and the rules are taught very early on in the onboarding/bootcamp process.
lysace · 1h ago
That part of the complaint is specifically about 1500 ”WhatsApp engineers”.
Different culture from the blue app, or whatever they call it?
mgh2 · 2h ago
Do you have proof?
YouWhy · 1h ago
To the extent a random person's evidence on the Internet amounts to proof:
From people at Facebook circa 2018, I know that end user privacy was addressed at multiple checkpoints -- onboarding, the UI of all systems that could theoretically access PII, war stories about senior people being fired due to them marginally misunderstanding the policy, etc.
Note that these friends did not belong to WhatsApp, which was at that time a rather separate suborg.
lordofgibbons · 6h ago
Given how WhatsApp is the de-facto way to communicate outside of the West and China, these security/data-handling "weaknesses" are most likely a feature, not a bug. An absolute bonanza for the certain intelligence services.
Remember, kids: End to end encryption is useless if the "ends" are fully controlled by an (untrustworthy) third party.
cataflam · 5h ago
> outside of the West
you probably mean outside of the USA, it's huge in Europe/UK
(which doesn't contradict your main point)
kwanbix · 4h ago
It is huge in Latin America.
USA is special because it is the (only?) country where iPhone has more users than Android.
101008 · 3h ago
Yeah, huge in Latin America in the sense that a lot (most?) business only have a number that they use with Whatsapp (you can't call or even text them). Is it the same in Europe? Since I am from Latin America I never know if people from other continents use Whatsapp as much as we do, and if when I ask them to use Whatsapp I am imposing a new app or it's what they regularly use.
Semaphor · 3m ago
No. Here in Germany WhatsApp is not even that widespread for businesses. But WA is very big here for personal communication, though Signal comes in second (at least amongst older people, and amongst my circle)
brazukadev · 3h ago
It's crazy how an US company dominates the world's messaging market but not in the US
oarla · 3h ago
It’s not uncommon. Orkut back in the day was wildly popular in Latin America and India. WhatsApp is the same. I think users in NA have a lot of high quality options as against those in Asia and LatAm who don’t have much reliable options other than ones developed in NA.
SoftTalker · 2h ago
You can get an android phone for about one tenth of what a new iPhone costs. That’s why android dominates lower income markets. Apple decided they just don’t want to be there.
somenameforme · 2h ago
It's definitely not the world's messaging market. For instance in Japan and many places in SEA, Line is the standard messenger - one many people probably haven't even heard of. Though it does have a nice play on words - are you on Line?
unethical_ban · 3h ago
Instagram and iMessage are also US owned services.
Sgt_Apone · 3h ago
iPhone has more users than Android in Canada and Japan as well. I think some Nordic countries too.
thaumasiotes · 1h ago
I would have thought he meant "inside of the West". Outside of the West you have other channels.
Russia: Telegram
Taiwan: Line
Japan: Line
By contrast, WhatsApp is best known to me for being used in Europe, Australia, and India.
zer0zzz · 3h ago
I’m not sure that’s true. I’m fairly certain UK, France, AU, Canada WhatsApp is not vastly more popular than the blue bubble alternative. At least I believe this was the case a few years ago, based on data I’d seen.
cataflam · 3h ago
France and UK, from personal experience, whatsapp is big, especially for professional use, or friends/family groups.
Blue bubble isn't really a thing ever mentioned in France either, not enough iPhone market share.
OJFord · 1h ago
I'm in the UK, I don't even know what 'the blue bubble alternative' is (Signal? Telegram?), everyone's on WhatsApp.
crypto_throwa · 6h ago
Without open source, end to end encryption is useless. It's not hard to hide a piece of code that defeats the encryption in closed source code.
__spooky__ · 6h ago
iMessage is end to end encrypted. Although Apple says it secure and the courts and FBI seem to not be able to get it in, it is still closed source.
bigiain · 5h ago
I can't tell if I'm being paranoid or just realistic, when I suspect that FBI/Apple fights over decrypting/unlocking iPhones or iMessage are just part of Apple's security theater.
If I were Evil-Tim-Cook, I'd have a deal with the FBI (and other agencies) where I'd hand over some user's data, in return for them keeping that secret and occasionally very publicly taking Apple to court demanding they expose a specific user and intentionally losing - to bolster Apple's privacy reputation.
throw0101a · 5h ago
> If I were Evil-Tim-Cook, I'd have a deal with the FBI (and other agencies) where I'd hand over some user's data, in return for them keeping that secret and occasionally very publicly taking Apple to court demanding they expose a specific user and intentionally losing - to bolster Apple's privacy reputation.
The FBI wants its investigations to go to court and lead to convictions. Any evidence gained in this way would be exposed as coming form Apple; notwithstanding parallel construction:
As for other agencies, I'm sure many have exploits to attack these devices and get spyware on them, and so may not need Apple's assistance.
14 · 4h ago
I imagine if you have the information parallel construction becomes trivial.
worthless-trash · 2h ago
The killers app for ai.
somenameforme · 1h ago
It's possible for it to be a facade, but also real.
Apple is a part of PRISM so there's approximately a 100% chance that anything you send to Apple via message, cloud, or whatever else, gets sent onto the NSA and consequently any agency that wants it. But the entire mass data collection they are doing is probably unconstitutional and thus illegal. But anytime it gets challenged in courts it gets thrown out on a lack of standing - nobody can prove it was used against them, so they don't have the legal standing to sue.
And the reason this is, is because its usage is never acknowledged in court. Instead there is parallel construction. [1] For instance imagine the NSA finds out somebody is e.g. muling some drugs. They tip off the police and then the police find the car in question and create some reason to pull it over - perhaps it was 'driving recklessly.' They coincidentally find the cache of drugs after doing a search of the car because the driver was 'behaving erratically', and then this 'coincidence' is how the evidence is introduced into court.
----
So getting back to Apple they probably want to have their cake and eat it too. By giving the NSA et al all they want behind the scenes they maintain those positive relations (and compensatory $$$ from the government), but then by genuinely fighting its normalization (which would allow it to be directly introduced) in court, they implicitly lie to their users that they're keeping their data protected. So it's this sort of strange thing where it's a facade, but simultaneously also real.
Wouldn’t it be easier to just not do that and have the same thing happen, but for real?
MangoToupe · 5h ago
Maybe. I think they'd have a hard time keeping that under wraps—governments aren't typically very careful (and the FBI is about as careful as a bull in a china shop) about not showing their hand when it comes to charging people. If you're strict about keeping certain info on certain channels, smart observers would notice if someone were snooping.
For instance, if someone shared something incriminating in a group chat and got arrested, and that info was only shared in the group chat, they'd have to silence everyone in that group chat to ensure that the channel still seemed secure. I don't think at least our government is that competent or careful.
But also, people wayyyy overhype how much apple tries to come off as privacy-forward. They sell ads and don't even allow you to deny apps access to the internet, and for the most part their phone security seems more focused on denying you control over your own phone rather than denying a third party access to it. I think they just don't want the hassle of complying with warrants. Stuff like pegasus would only be so easy to sell if you couldn't lean on the company to gain access, and I think it'd be difficult for hundreds of countries to conspire to obscure legal pressure. Finally Apple generally has little to gain from reading your data, unlike other tech giants with perverse incentives.
Of course this is all speculation, but I do trust imessages much more than I trust anything coming out of meta, and most of what comes out of google.
paulryanrogers · 4h ago
iMessage backups in the cloud are subject to warrants. Even if you don't use iCloud backups, can you be sure everyone you communicate with also abstains?
stingraycharles · 4h ago
Aren’t those encrypted with a key that lives on your device only?
bri3d · 3h ago
Only if you enable Advanced Data Protection, but in that case, yes, absolutely
ants_everywhere · 4h ago
how would you restore if you lost your device?
bri3d · 3h ago
Backups with Advanced Data Protection also enroll:
* Recovery Keys
* Recovery Contact (someone who holds your recovery key in key escrow)
ants_everywhere · 1h ago
right, the ability to recover implies keys exist outside the device. even if they gossip keys to other devices you control, there are lots of people with only a single apple device.
rpdillon · 5h ago
Just don't back it up to iCloud!
yamazakiwi · 5h ago
Not able to get into it legally or without consequence, it is not infallible.
saagarjha · 4h ago
It is actually quite difficult.
another_twist · 6h ago
Curious, is there a poc somewhere demonstrating an attack like this ?
I think Signal is the safest choice. If you want to be absolutely sure, host your own service, and hope you know how to make it have airtight security.
thewebguyd · 5h ago
Makes you wonder if Meta got one or more of those secret national security letters, or foreign equivalents.
Also makes me wonder about Google's change wrt android security patches - under the guise of "making it easier for OEMs" by moving to quarterly is actually just so that Paragon and other nation state spyware has access to the vulnerabilities for at least 4 months before they get patched.
storus · 4h ago
Didn't Hacker News feature an article on their home page at some point (10 years ago?) that at that time Facebook misconfigured something and users could observe their data being fed directly to some Israeli intelligence company? That was the day I deleted my FB account and never looked at anything they offer anymore.
stingraycharles · 4h ago
At this point it’s best to assume that everything you communicate is being collected in some way.
There are very, very few apps I really trust. E.g. the only mechanism I trust for communicating passwords securely is GPG, I wouldn’t even use Signal for that.
cryptoegorophy · 2h ago
Unless you owner of the app and what they are doing exactly you can’t trust anyone. You don’t know what they are going through or if they sold the app to someone or had a certain code implementation that leaks all of your data.
I stopped using Chrome when I had clear evidence of it leaking data - urls visited.
When it comes to e2e encryption it's important for the ends to be static (not web apps) and auditable (open source, reproducible builds) because the software running on the ends can trivially compromise anything going trough either of them. It can be as simple as a script being loaded from the server into a runtime such as Lua (closed source app). Or custom javascript delivered (web app).
When these conditions aren't met, any e2e encryption claim can be dismissed out of hand. This does not mean the service offers no value, it just means it cannot be trusted to keep anything confidential.
transcriptase · 2h ago
Unsurprising given it’s been an open secret for over a decade that Meta employees will (if you have the right contacts or amount of money), orchestrate banning or seizing long-standing active accounts with desirable usernames and giving them to their friends or the highest bidder.
A related scheme is the existence of brokers who will, for a fee, recover banned or locked accounts. User pays the broker $X, broker pays their contact at Meta $Y, and using internal tooling suddenly a ban or suspension that would normally put someone in an endless loop of automated vague bullshit responses gets restored.
npalli · 5h ago
All Meta guys develop a conscience after leaving Meta.
danudey · 5h ago
You have to put your conscience in escrow until your options vest.
pixl97 · 5h ago
I mean the options are
1) leave quietly and tell no one: con - no one on HN gets to talk about it. The next person needing money does it anyway.
2) leave loudly when you're still poor: con - you get blacklisted from tech and die from a preventable disease working at a gas station without insurance. The company implements the policy anyway.
3) leave loudly when your rich: con - people accuse you of selling out the users.
solid_fuel · 5h ago
I believe you are forgetting:
4) Don't join Meta in the first place
I have consistently told recruiters from Meta to leave me alone. It is a company that has knowingly done massive harm to our culture and our children, and I have no interest in ever working with or for them.
gerdesj · 4h ago
"He also claimed the company failed to remedy the hacking and takeover of more than 100,000 accounts each day, ignoring his pleas and proposed fixes and choosing instead to prioritize user growth."
There is no oversight of these monstrosities of any sort. I doubt anyone would have issues with the thesis that Meta would implement anything that might curb their user numbers unless it was mandated.
Why would they? They are beholden to their shareholders first. If it isn't illegal then it isn't illegal, immoral perhaps but that is not illegal, unless it is illegal.
My learned friends are going to have to really get their bowling arms warmed up for this sort of skit. For starters, you need a victim ... err complainant.
alex1138 · 1h ago
Zuckerberg has a different class of shares
And not every CEO begins life in their company with "if you need any info just ask, they trust me, dumb fucks"
kelipso · 17m ago
Wasn’t using Whatsapp that got a bunch of people droned by Israel? You should just assume your metadata at the very least is getting leaked to all US friendly intelligence agencies if you are using a US based service.
mentalgear · 5h ago
If you haven't already: Signal is the strongest independent e2e encrypted consumer app that is driven by a non-profit organisation using a zero knowledge approach.
alex1138 · 4h ago
I've seen some people right here on HN say that Whatsapp was an inspired acquisition and Zuck is a great product guy, knows what to buy and who to hire
> In his whistleblower complaint, Baig is requesting reinstatement, back pay and compensatory damages, along with potential regulatory enforcement action against the company.
If the company is so bad (it is), why does he want back?!
'Just pay me the salaries I "missed", and keep them coming.' The regulatory action is just "potential".
I have no sympathy for Meta, but this guy...
saagarjha · 4h ago
Companies are not relationships where once they're your ex they are never worth interacting with ever again. If you are doing good work and then HR pushes you out, then it is reasonable to sue the company to get them to pay you damages and then go back to doing what you were before with the protection that they won't do it again.
sudahtigabulan · 2h ago
The point I tried to make was not that he should be resentful about being kicked out, but that he doesn't really care that Meta is unethical and endangers billions.
Even if nothing changes (the regulatory action is optional), he's happy to contribute (he insists, in fact). Even among people who don't want him there.
mapotofu · 1h ago
The points you’re making are personal attacks about the whistleblower. They don’t focus on the substance of the accusations (insecurity). Instead, they focus on your idea of their career motivations and their personality.
skybrian · 4h ago
Maybe so he can quit properly? I wonder how these lawsuits work? Maybe a lawyer would know.
> A Meta spokesperson, Andy Stone, wrote on Threads, the company’s text-based social network: “Sadly this is a familiar playbook in which a former employee is dismissed for poor performance and then goes public with distorted claims that misrepresent the ongoing hard work of our team.”
Skeletons keep piling up while PR try to dismiss them
neilv · 6h ago
That quote is brilliant.
Corporate communications has playbook damage control responses, and this quote seems to be suggesting that the quoted response is one of them (it's "familiar").
Whether "former employees" are sketchily operating from playbooks, who knows. Because PR playbook-sounding statements don't have a lot of credibility.
palata · 5h ago
I hate Meta as much as the next person, but it feels like "endangering billions of users" is exagerating here. The complaint is pretty much that WhatsApp engineers can access metadata (NOT the content of the messages).
This said, WhatsApp is not open source, so it's impossible for users to verify how the encryption works, so users have to trust that it's properly end-to-end encrypted.
If you care about privacy (and you should), then you should use Signal instead of WhatsApp.
ryandrake · 5h ago
The metadata of someone's communications can be almost as damning as the content. I would guess that if the FBI could merely have a list of who their suspect contacted over an app, and when, they'd have 90% of what they wanted.
rhizome · 4h ago
My understanding is that in the vast majority of investigations law enforcement will be satisfied in learning only who you're talking to, i.e. "just metadata" is fine, and dangerous.
3eb7988a1663 · 2h ago
It seems reasonable. Even those who are sloppy with their opsec probably do not detail the entirety of the plan via digital mechanisms. Being able to identify likely collaborators is probably sufficient to infer some specifics of an activity.
mynameisash · 3h ago
> The complaint is pretty much that WhatsApp engineers can access metadata (NOT the content of the messages).
I don't even take this statement at face value. It's trivially easy to include models on client side that can do some message classification and treat that as "metadata" that would give insight into the content of the message.
alehlopeh · 3h ago
Metadata includes notifications, which often include the text of the message.
ipython · 6h ago
I’m sure WhatsApp’s recent “secure by design” media and ad blitz is totally unrelated to these accusations …
mentalgear · 5h ago
Seems just in line with all the other Meta Scandals: from providing a platform for genocide in Myanmar, harming the psychology of 100s of millions of teenagers (Instagram) to pushing extremist and fascists content while receiving big ad cash dollars for propaganda that lifts criminals and fascist politicians into the highest offices. Meta has no red lines, as long as it lines Zuckerberg's pockets.
xvector · 2h ago
> WhatsApp engineers could “move or steal user data” including contact information, IP addresses and profile photos “without detection or audit trail”.
So not messages.
fHr · 4h ago
still use Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp you sheeple
ath3nd · 6h ago
What a trash company Meta has consistently been.
From enabling genocide in Myanmar, to interfering with elections, to giving user data to third parties in violation of its own daya policies, to straight up weird stuff like pirating/torrening books to train their steaming pile of garbage called llama, to having sex chatbots be weird to children.
And then there is the even weirder decisions of zuck, the biggest loser of all:
- VR didnt seem to catch on
- the metaverse is a giant smelly pile of poo and he sunk millions in it
- he is hiring AI engineers at absurd money in a rapidly cooling bubble market
- he immediately started ass kissing the orange stain that calls himself president
Is he purposefully trying to be a caricature cartoon vilain, a grotesque loser, and his company an emblem of evil? Or is it just cluelessness?
globalnode · 5h ago
They managed to tap in to a seemingly unlimited ocean of uninformed useful idiots, paid shills, bots and psychopaths. Its how you get rich in social media.
rhizome · 4h ago
Greater Fool Theory
vladmk · 6h ago
nothing new here.
wordofx · 6h ago
So much for that e2e encryption that HN claimed was so good and that META couldn’t possibly use what’s app messages to do advertising from.
alaq · 6h ago
Messages are e2e and WA doesn't have access to them. We're talking about the metadata here.
From the article:
> including contact information, IP addresses and profile photos
I can confirm this, I used to work at WhatsApp.
roelschroeven · 6h ago
We don't really know that messages really are end-to-end encrypted though, do we? Is there a way to actually check that the messages in transit are encrypted in a way that only the other end can decrypt them? If not, we have to take Meta's word for it, which frankly doesn't carry much weight.
lioeters · 5h ago
How can we call it "E2E encryption" in any meaningful sense of the term when the ends run proprietary code, and at least one of the ends has proven themselves unworthy of trust time and again.
wordofx · 6h ago
Meta/WA. Same thing. Might have worked at WhatsApp but FB still advertises based on conversation content.
jonoc · 6h ago
Not sure this is correct - alaq said the messages are e2e, so not visible at all by anyone other that the participants of the conversation. The meta->data<- however IS visible by them and can and is likely to be used for advertising.
another_twist · 6h ago
Of course the meta data is visible. Its probably more useful than the actual content of the conversation too. I mean from an ML perspective how would you even make features out of conversation that help with CTR ? That too without creeping the users out. I'd imagine its the same reason why meta doesnt (likely) listen in on mobile mics. Why go through the whole shebang of running always on transcription when simple features like who talked to who and at what times are more useful at establishing user similarities.
jonoc · 59m ago
I'm not making a stance on things, just clarifying the previous comment
gnabgib · 7h ago
Edit: Oof good catch (bad day for Meta)
mdhb · 7h ago
This is unfortunately entirely seperate from that other article.
FTA:
> Attaullah Baig, who served as head of security for WhatsApp from 2021 to 2025, claims that approximately 1,500 engineers had unrestricted access to user data without proper oversight, potentially violating a US government order that imposed a $5bn penalty on the company in 2020.
princevegeta89 · 6h ago
It will be so foolish of anyone to think that WhatsApp is a truly e2e encrypted messaging platform.
another_twist · 6h ago
Why ? You think Meta removed the privacy layers or put backdoors in place ? I mean if that's the suspicion, maybe we should read the terms of service and see if they actually guarantee E2E encryption
princevegeta89 · 6h ago
Every message we send via this service still most likely goes through it's bots that try to gather user context.
I'm guessing there will be some tricky legal wording in their T&C that wouldn't rule them out from being an intermediate entity that can see messages.
alex1138 · 4h ago
The way Zuckerberg tricked Acton and Koum is by itself enough for me not to trust Whatsapp. Even from a hypothetical "their encryption works but that's really scummy" perspective
It was bought as a power play, consolidation of tech power. Why would I trust them to do the right thing?
If it results in a new billion-dollar penalty, maybe it would've saved money to move him quietly to a cushy rest-and-vest advisory position, in which he's not allowed to see, do, or say anything.
> In his whistleblower complaint, Baig is requesting reinstatement, [...]
I don't understand the "reinstatement" part. Does he actually want to go back, and think that it wouldn't be a toxic dynamic?
(He already talked about retaliation. And then by going public the way he did, I'd think he burned that bridge, salted the earth for a mile around bridge, and then nuked the entire metro area from orbit.)
Or is "reinstatement" simply something the lawyers just have to ask for, to ostensibly make him whole, but they actually neither want nor expect that?
Different culture from the blue app, or whatever they call it?
From people at Facebook circa 2018, I know that end user privacy was addressed at multiple checkpoints -- onboarding, the UI of all systems that could theoretically access PII, war stories about senior people being fired due to them marginally misunderstanding the policy, etc.
Note that these friends did not belong to WhatsApp, which was at that time a rather separate suborg.
Remember, kids: End to end encryption is useless if the "ends" are fully controlled by an (untrustworthy) third party.
you probably mean outside of the USA, it's huge in Europe/UK
(which doesn't contradict your main point)
USA is special because it is the (only?) country where iPhone has more users than Android.
Russia: Telegram
Taiwan: Line
Japan: Line
By contrast, WhatsApp is best known to me for being used in Europe, Australia, and India.
Blue bubble isn't really a thing ever mentioned in France either, not enough iPhone market share.
If I were Evil-Tim-Cook, I'd have a deal with the FBI (and other agencies) where I'd hand over some user's data, in return for them keeping that secret and occasionally very publicly taking Apple to court demanding they expose a specific user and intentionally losing - to bolster Apple's privacy reputation.
The FBI wants its investigations to go to court and lead to convictions. Any evidence gained in this way would be exposed as coming form Apple; notwithstanding parallel construction:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
As for other agencies, I'm sure many have exploits to attack these devices and get spyware on them, and so may not need Apple's assistance.
Apple is a part of PRISM so there's approximately a 100% chance that anything you send to Apple via message, cloud, or whatever else, gets sent onto the NSA and consequently any agency that wants it. But the entire mass data collection they are doing is probably unconstitutional and thus illegal. But anytime it gets challenged in courts it gets thrown out on a lack of standing - nobody can prove it was used against them, so they don't have the legal standing to sue.
And the reason this is, is because its usage is never acknowledged in court. Instead there is parallel construction. [1] For instance imagine the NSA finds out somebody is e.g. muling some drugs. They tip off the police and then the police find the car in question and create some reason to pull it over - perhaps it was 'driving recklessly.' They coincidentally find the cache of drugs after doing a search of the car because the driver was 'behaving erratically', and then this 'coincidence' is how the evidence is introduced into court.
----
So getting back to Apple they probably want to have their cake and eat it too. By giving the NSA et al all they want behind the scenes they maintain those positive relations (and compensatory $$$ from the government), but then by genuinely fighting its normalization (which would allow it to be directly introduced) in court, they implicitly lie to their users that they're keeping their data protected. So it's this sort of strange thing where it's a facade, but simultaneously also real.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
For instance, if someone shared something incriminating in a group chat and got arrested, and that info was only shared in the group chat, they'd have to silence everyone in that group chat to ensure that the channel still seemed secure. I don't think at least our government is that competent or careful.
But also, people wayyyy overhype how much apple tries to come off as privacy-forward. They sell ads and don't even allow you to deny apps access to the internet, and for the most part their phone security seems more focused on denying you control over your own phone rather than denying a third party access to it. I think they just don't want the hassle of complying with warrants. Stuff like pegasus would only be so easy to sell if you couldn't lean on the company to gain access, and I think it'd be difficult for hundreds of countries to conspire to obscure legal pressure. Finally Apple generally has little to gain from reading your data, unlike other tech giants with perverse incentives.
Of course this is all speculation, but I do trust imessages much more than I trust anything coming out of meta, and most of what comes out of google.
* Recovery Keys
* Recovery Contact (someone who holds your recovery key in key escrow)
Also makes me wonder about Google's change wrt android security patches - under the guise of "making it easier for OEMs" by moving to quarterly is actually just so that Paragon and other nation state spyware has access to the vulnerabilities for at least 4 months before they get patched.
There are very, very few apps I really trust. E.g. the only mechanism I trust for communicating passwords securely is GPG, I wouldn’t even use Signal for that.
When these conditions aren't met, any e2e encryption claim can be dismissed out of hand. This does not mean the service offers no value, it just means it cannot be trusted to keep anything confidential.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2022/11/17/meta-disciplined-or-fire...
A related scheme is the existence of brokers who will, for a fee, recover banned or locked accounts. User pays the broker $X, broker pays their contact at Meta $Y, and using internal tooling suddenly a ban or suspension that would normally put someone in an endless loop of automated vague bullshit responses gets restored.
1) leave quietly and tell no one: con - no one on HN gets to talk about it. The next person needing money does it anyway.
2) leave loudly when you're still poor: con - you get blacklisted from tech and die from a preventable disease working at a gas station without insurance. The company implements the policy anyway.
3) leave loudly when your rich: con - people accuse you of selling out the users.
4) Don't join Meta in the first place
I have consistently told recruiters from Meta to leave me alone. It is a company that has knowingly done massive harm to our culture and our children, and I have no interest in ever working with or for them.
There is no oversight of these monstrosities of any sort. I doubt anyone would have issues with the thesis that Meta would implement anything that might curb their user numbers unless it was mandated.
Why would they? They are beholden to their shareholders first. If it isn't illegal then it isn't illegal, immoral perhaps but that is not illegal, unless it is illegal.
My learned friends are going to have to really get their bowling arms warmed up for this sort of skit. For starters, you need a victim ... err complainant.
And not every CEO begins life in their company with "if you need any info just ask, they trust me, dumb fucks"
Counterpoint: he's a monopolist and scummy person (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122) who refuses to stop (https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/09/snapchat-reporte...) from the early days onwards (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1169354)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15007454
If the company is so bad (it is), why does he want back?!
'Just pay me the salaries I "missed", and keep them coming.' The regulatory action is just "potential".
I have no sympathy for Meta, but this guy...
Even if nothing changes (the regulatory action is optional), he's happy to contribute (he insists, in fact). Even among people who don't want him there.
Complaint:
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.45...
Skeletons keep piling up while PR try to dismiss them
Corporate communications has playbook damage control responses, and this quote seems to be suggesting that the quoted response is one of them (it's "familiar").
Whether "former employees" are sketchily operating from playbooks, who knows. Because PR playbook-sounding statements don't have a lot of credibility.
This said, WhatsApp is not open source, so it's impossible for users to verify how the encryption works, so users have to trust that it's properly end-to-end encrypted.
If you care about privacy (and you should), then you should use Signal instead of WhatsApp.
I don't even take this statement at face value. It's trivially easy to include models on client side that can do some message classification and treat that as "metadata" that would give insight into the content of the message.
So not messages.
From enabling genocide in Myanmar, to interfering with elections, to giving user data to third parties in violation of its own daya policies, to straight up weird stuff like pirating/torrening books to train their steaming pile of garbage called llama, to having sex chatbots be weird to children.
And then there is the even weirder decisions of zuck, the biggest loser of all:
- VR didnt seem to catch on
- the metaverse is a giant smelly pile of poo and he sunk millions in it
- he is hiring AI engineers at absurd money in a rapidly cooling bubble market
- he immediately started ass kissing the orange stain that calls himself president
Is he purposefully trying to be a caricature cartoon vilain, a grotesque loser, and his company an emblem of evil? Or is it just cluelessness?
From the article: > including contact information, IP addresses and profile photos
I can confirm this, I used to work at WhatsApp.
FTA:
> Attaullah Baig, who served as head of security for WhatsApp from 2021 to 2025, claims that approximately 1,500 engineers had unrestricted access to user data without proper oversight, potentially violating a US government order that imposed a $5bn penalty on the company in 2020.
I'm guessing there will be some tricky legal wording in their T&C that wouldn't rule them out from being an intermediate entity that can see messages.
It was bought as a power play, consolidation of tech power. Why would I trust them to do the right thing?