Unencrypted chat history is a prime target for police

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/1874605

A 17-year-old from Nebraska and her mother are facing criminal charges including performing an illegal abortion and concealing a dead body after police obtained the pair’s private chat history from Facebook, court documents published by Motherboard show.

  • ghariksforge@lemmy.worldEnglish
    62·
    1 year ago

    End2End encryption is mostly a PR stunt. In practice it’s not hard to go around it. For example:

    • going after unencrypted backups (such as in google drive)
    • compromising or seizing your device
    • forcing the app developer to leak the private keys
    • forcing you to turn over the information by threatenening you with not cooperating.

    It reminds me of this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/538/