Comment by EE84M3i | Hacker News Reader

Comment by EE84M3i | Hacker News Reader

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"But why would WhatsApp store it unencrypted on Google Drive, and encrypted (without giving you any access to the key) on your own SD card or local backup? It makes no sense."

The design is pretty clearly to support the bog standard backup use case of "something happened to my device, I got a new one, I want my old data".

It would be nice if they added an option to also encrypt backups, although I think it would be non trivial to design where the key material would live. (phone enclave? Multiple devices? adding/removing devices? etc) Not to mention just having the option might cause more harm than good if people turn it on and regret it.

I think their design philosophy here is likely "let's err on the side of smooth UX and let the 'end-to-end encryption is srs bzns' loonies go to signal"

As mentioned in my previous post:

They already support encrypted backups. In fact, they don't support unencrypted locally.

> The design is pretty clearly to support the bog standard backup use case of "something happened to my device, I got a new one, I want my old data".

They had, in fact, perfected the local encrypted seamless "something went wrong" workflow - they keys are delivered from the server (stored or generated, I don't know) once you've proved you can receive texts on that phone number. Without that, the local backup is useless.

And IIRC, they ALSO did the same with Google Drive. But then, one day, it stopped counting against your quota and the encryption disappeared.

> I think their design philosophy here is likely "let's err on the side of smooth UX

The UI was as smooth as it can be. It still is, for local backup.

I try not to attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity, deadlines or missing budgets, but in this case, there was a decision to remove encryption, that required negotiating with a rival. That decision had costs, and the process had costs. There is a benefit associated or this decision would not have been taken. I don't know exactly what it is.

Thank you for laying bare the specifics of this issue. It does seem indefensible.

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