

WhatsApp handles more messages than Apple's iMessage does - nikunjk
http://bgr.com/2012/10/23/apple-imessage-analysis-whatsapp/

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beforebeta
how exactly is WhatsApp "pushing around" Apple - that would indicate that
there is a power & influence sort of relationship between the two companies.
Rather, this is a case of WhatsApp outperforming Apple due to its multi-
platform support, extended featureset and first mover advantage

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macrael
WhatsApp is insecure, right? Did they ever respond to that? If any major
company implemented a chat protocol that sent messages in plaintext today, I
imagine they would be crucified. What can we do to get WhatsApp to adopt
security?

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mxxx
if i remember correctly they _do_ encrypt your messages but authentication is
based on something like your phone number as your username and your IMEI as
your password or something absolutely ridiculous.

i read about it on slashdot, and told my sister, who uses it all the time. her
response was "oh, should i care?". _sigh_

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saurik
Many people happily use Twitter to talk to each other, entirely in public;
many people will not care unless you can show them something they actually
consider to be sensitive information that would be leaked by the lack of
security.

I mean, to put this in perspective: my physical mailbox is secured by a pretty
crummy key; it is sufficiently crummy that, early on when I didn't know which
mailbox was mine, I found another mailbox near mine shares the same key.

However, if I really wanted to get mail out of the mailboxes, it would not
only be trivial to pick any of these old and simple locks, but I bet I could
get in to the back with a pair of pliers and put it back together without
anyone noticing.

Yet, I don't particularly care: I don't have any of my bank/credit statements
go to my apartment, and that's good enough for me, with regards to the
security of my mail. If someone really wants to steal it from me, they
could... but seriously: "should I care?".

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macrael
I think there are a bunch of different levels of expected privacy, and I think
the problem is that text messaging has a very high level of expected privacy
and what's app does not live up to that. Text messaging is one of the most
personal forms of communication we have, it's instant, it's directly from one
person to another person, we expect people to read and respond to texts quite
frequently, and it requires knowing someone's cell number (which is much more
carefully handed out than, say, email addresses). Especially because of the
one on one aspect, furthered by the fact that people read texts directly off
their phones so there is very little over the shoulder reading done (this is
something where having iMessage on the desktop has actually bothered me, I
could be working on something with someone and have a personal text show up on
the screen) texting can be very intimate and private.

Moreover, it's digital, so most people don't really understand how any of it
works and there is a much larger attack vector than the inherent physical
locality required by stealing someone's mail.

What's app should be secure.

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saurik
The reason I provided the response that I did is that the implication of mxxx
sighing at his sister asking "oh, should I care?" is that "of course you
should care: this is insecure!", when it is not at all clear that any
individual person should care.

In practice, WhatsApp is actually much more secure than most of the things
that people trust with their privacy, and this is certainly true for the
people against whom most people are specifically attempting to protect their
private things from being taken by.

As an example: let's say that an ex-girlfriend of mine decided to stalk me.
She can either 1) use a pair of pliers and steal my physical mail, 2) guess a
poorly-chosen four-digit PIN number and access my voicemail, or 3) guess my
14-digit IMEI (Android; alternatively, 160-bit UDID on iPhone) and access my
WhatsApp account.

In actuality, then, WhatsApp is one of the most secure things I might
currently be using to protect my privacy from these kinds of other users. I
can easily see someone saying "so, should I care?" about this particular
vulnerability.

Of course, for someone else, that might not be the case: if you use WhatsApp
for something much more sensitive than I might, or you are attempting to
protect yourself from a much more sophisticated attacker than most people are
(example: most people really and honestly don't care that a large faceless
corporation knows you hated your sister's cheesecake), then you probably do
(and certainly should) care.

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melvinmt
I guess many people still think they're sending out text messages while
they're using iMessage which may the reason why they've been reluctant to use
it as much as WhatsApp (they think they're getting charged for every message).

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derefr
My mother has a dumbphone. My girlfriend has a Blackberry. My friends have
Androids. Some of my coworkers have iOS devices, but not nearly the majority.
So, for me, iMessage isn't free. And I think this is true for the majority of
the population that doesn't live in the Apple-centred SV hype bubble. If Apple
opened the iMessage protocol to non-iOS devices[1], I'd use iMessage in a
heartbeat--I prefer its UX. But until then, I'll only use it to reply when
someone sends _me_ an SMS--because, like email, SMS is universal.

[1] They wouldn't even have to write iMessage apps for those devices--just
allow, say, _WhatsApp_ , to use the iMessage protocol.

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onetwothreefour
Apple has zero interest in opening up iMessage to any non-Apple device. So
that'll never happen.

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jperezcu
that's a misleading title

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joonix
This may be related to the fact that WhatsApp actually works.

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WrkInProgress
I'm curious, in what way does iMessage not work ?

