[taylodl]

Apple's iMessage is secured end-to-end, your mobile carrier can't see the message. As soon as the box goes green then any intermediary, including your mobile carrier and your friend's mobile carrier, can read the message and/or make it available to law enforcement.

In a U.S. court of law Apple has stood up to authority and pointed out they can't provide the messages requested as they're locked even to Apple. Facebook on the other hand has acquiesced to U.S. law enforcement. That tells me that even if Facebook has secured end-to-end messaging, which I don't think they've ever claimed, they have backdoors.

[mmcnl]

WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted. WhatsApp actually uses the Signal Protocol. Probably the best protocol they could use. It's described pretty detailed in a whitepaper publicly available on the WhatsApp website: https://www.whatsapp.com/security/WhatsApp-Security-Whitepap...

[taylodl]

You got me to look into this further. I was seeing if there was a backdoor - and it appears there isn't. https://signal.org/blog/there-is-no-whatsapp-backdoor/

Given that I don't see why more of us Americans aren't using WhatsApp! :)

[mmcnl]

Ofcourse WhatsApp is not open source, as opposed to Signal (the app). You can never be truly sure if the protocol is implemented without backdoors because you can't verify the code. But I agree, WhatsApp is a pretty solid app.

[umanwizard]

WhatsApp definitely claims end-to-end encryption. There’s a bubble telling you so at the top of every new WhatsApp thread.

[ahaseeb]

If that's the case how do they detect if a message has been forwarded too many times ?

[type0]

It's all about metadata, PRISM et al

[umanwizard]

I don’t know.