Facebook is testing end-to-end encryption enabled by default 'in some' - IT Pro - News

I think the PR department chose this as the perfect moment. The problem is that Facebook is forced to give up those conversations if the government asks. That is also the case here in the Netherlands. Now they can say “but to use it for this is going too far for us, that we are going to roll out E2EE more quickly to protect our users”. That gives the impression that Facebook really does care about your privacy and security and so on and on and blah blah.

In this case, I understand that it comes as a complete surprise. That mother and daughter were discussing something that was completely legal until very recently… Now see. Really such a situation in which “you can trust your government now, but you never know about tomorrow” comes true.

Also, I don’t think you can really look at Facebook badly about this. That law is crazy and Facebook can’t ignore such a subpoena to hand over conversations they have access to. The same can happen to your ISP, your mail provider (it doesn’t matter which one, even if you’re with unknown hoster A) and so on. Mail in particular is also disastrous because really hardly anyone uses S/MIME or even PGP. And yes, the fact that people also use insecure services such as SMS (very large in the US; still), Facebook Messenger, Skype, Telegram, Discord, etc. for their (sensitive) private conversations does not make it any better.

This is actually one of the reasons that privacy advocates have been saying for years that continuously giving away and centrally storing all your data, including private conversations, is simply a bad plan. Not because privacy is something to “hide something illegal” or to be “sneaky” that many people often try to bully you. (“Have you got something to hide then? What can’t stand the daylight??” John, it’s none of your business what I ate for lunch this afternoon!) No, it’s nobody’s business, especially those companies – And well: if the legislation then also radically changes, you get these kinds of situations.

Long story short: if you don’t already (generally speaking hey, not necessarily addressed to you juliank ), start protecting your online privacy and security today. A good start is to leave the unsafe services such as FB Messenger, Telegram, SMS, but actually also WhatsApp because of the metadata collection (although the CONTENT of your conversation is encrypted, that makes a difference.) etc. for private conversations and switch to a secure messenger like Signal. It is therefore good to see that as a result of this news of that mother and daughter you see a surge in registrations with Signal from the US. And also take a look https://privacyguides.org/