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by gpm 3362 days ago
So I checked if this matches their privacy whitepaper [0] that claims to list what they store. It almost does, with one notable exception and one minor one.

* All of your contacts.

Wire contacts, they only store non-wire contacts in a hashed form, and there's an opt out for non-wire contacts.

* Unencrypted profile

(Isn't this just profile picture (which is shown to people you haven't connected with), and name anyways?) They do say so in the privacy policy.

* Every active conversation you have.

Specifically they claim to store:

Who/when it was created, who is involved (which seems critical to be able to route messages), and conversation name

* Every archived conversation you have.

I assume they store the same as for non-archived conversations, seems necessary to be able to add new devices.

* The frequency that you communicate with your contacts ('top contacts').

Ya... that's not listed as far as I can tell. Arguably "aggregated usage statistics"... but it's not really aggregated.

* Every group that you're in.

This is the same as conversations... they clearly need to know this to route messages.

* The unencrypted titles and avatars of everyone's groups.

Titles is listed. Avatars of groups isn't... seems like a minor oversight though given that they're like a profile picture, and profile pictures are publicly available.

[0] https://wire.com/resource/Wire%20Privacy%20Whitepaper/downlo...

2 comments

> So I checked if this matches their privacy whitepaper [0] that claims to list what they store. It almost does, with one notable exception and one minor one.

Maybe it's good that they've documented this somewhere, but I don't think most Wire users read white papers. I'm a dev and I was surprised. Their outward facing marketing didn't lead me to think they track all my contacts and the state of every conversation I am having. It very clearly suggests the total opposite.

They need to do much better than this if they want people to think they take security/privacy seriously.

>> * Every group that you're in.

> This is the same as conversations... they clearly need to know this to route messages.

Why? That's not true for Signal from what I can tell.

> Maybe it's good that they've documented this somewhere, but I don't think most Wire users read white papers.

In the sense of "most users don't read privacy policies", sure.

It's pretty clearly linked in their privacy policy as "this is where you should go for information", I know I'm not the only wire user who read it before installing it.

> Why? That's not true for Signal from what I can tell.

Ya... I think I overstated it. It's the easiest way to route messages but it's not the only way.

Why do they need to know active conversations to route? Every time you send a message it should contain the needed info.