schvenk

Online privacy is on a lot of minds these days. But what’s actually worth worrying about? And how can we help non-technical folks navigate these questions?

Let's start with personal communication. Because...well...it's personal. And every time you text someone, you’re giving the contents of your message—every word—to multiple internet companies, unknown other parties, and potentially the governments of one or more countries.

In recent weeks, Apple has taken heavy criticism for its failures around Apple Intelligence. While those missteps might seem like a typical strategic blunder, it could reflect a fundamental challenge with AI products—and a trap companies like Google and Figma have fallen into as well: the AI 80/20.

..and other things that, to be fair, I didn't fully spell out in the article. I suppose I could have said "periodically confuses your friends" because a lot of it has to do with switching phones, switching numbers, having more than one number, etc.—-things that aren't everyday affairs but also aren't that uncommon.

To be fair, when I said "millions of others worldwide" I was making a (pretty safe) assumption. As the default messaging service on every phone, and with literally billions of phones out there, it seems pretty likely that in the entire non-US world there are millions of people using it.

The thing with email is it's only encrypted (even in transit) sometimes. So it kinda has the same issue as iMessage. If you're a Gmail user using Gmail's web app to email another Gmail user, you get encryption in transit (and it sounds like you might be able to implement E2EE as well). But if you email [email protected], you won't know until you send the message whether it's encrypted.

As for envelopes and wax seals--it's an interesting question. It requires a lot less technical knowledge for someone to open that envelope than to spy on messaging traffic. On the other hand, a lot more people have access to the messaging traffic and can bring scripts to bear on it at scale.

To clarify: I'm not suggesting you trust Telegram more than mobile providers--if SMS were encrypted in transit I'd have a much weaker case against it. But the point is, with Telegram you're placing trust in Telegram. With SMS you're placing trust in your mobile provider, AND your friends' mobile providers, AND an unknown collection of other entities. At a minimum, that's a lot more points of weakness, even if each individual one is equally trustworthy.