Signal's Privacy Trade-off: End-to-End Encryption Protects Content But Metadata Reveals Communication Patterns
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Front-window bakery material. Catches the eye, delivers the goods.
Summary
The article discusses Signal's privacy limitations, explaining that while Signal provides end-to-end encryption for message content, it still collects metadata about who is communicating with whom through phone number identifiers. The author shares a personal experience of explaining to a friend that Signal knows users' phone numbers and can see which numbers are communicating, even if it can't read the actual messages. This metadata collection represents a privacy trade-off that users should understand.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledWell, it's end-to-end encrypted, so they don't know what we're talking about, but they definitely know that we're talking to each other.
Signal uses our phone numbers as ID's. So, Signal would know that Phone Number A is talking to Phone Number B
if they can figure out that Phone Number A belongs to me, and Phone Number B belongs to my friend
Or, at the very least, they can.
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