The mess I’m describing — end-to-end encryption but with certain exceptions — may be a healthy balance of your privacy and our safety.
The problem is it’s confusing to know what is encrypted and secret in communications apps, what is not and why it might matter to you.
To illuminate the nuances, I broke down five questions about end-to-end encryption for five communications apps.
This is straightforward and good overview of what, exactly, is end-to-end encrypted in the various chat and IM applications we use today. There’s a lot of ifs and buts here.
Obviously there’s the caveat where the app and platform developers can access messages after they’ve been decrypted and I’m glad they mention it. But it needs to be said that “end to end encryption” does NOT automatically mean app developers don’t have the keys. In imessage for example, apple controls the encryption keys used by the end to end crypto.. So despite the fact that the channel may be end to end encrypted, they could still technically wiretap it by substituting the keys used for encryption. Alternatively apple in particular has the ability to update any software on IOS to spy on users at will.