There’s no such thing as internet privacy, only perceived internet privacy.
ACLU – U.S. Surveillance Law May Poorly Protect New Text Messaging Services
Electronic Frontier Foundation – New Ninth Circuit Case Protects Text Message Privacy From Police and Employers
by
Tags:
This is a little misleading because some of the services on the right are encrypted in such a way as to not be readable even by the provider (iMessage in particular). So while the message isn’t explicitly covered by law, the transport is covered by technology and the contents of my phone are covered by law.
Totally agree with the principle, though. Assume most if not all communication is subject to outside eyes and you are closer to the truth than thinking some random service is protecting you.
You say “somewhat misleading” mostly because it doesn’t go totally in depth and I just say… “Simplified” so anyone can understand.
You are correct that some providers encrypt messages to a varying degree. Of course, in the terms of service of many providers we’re agreeing for them to scan the content of the message for the sake of placing relevant ads. (Google’s Gmail pioneered this. Now, lots of players do it.)
In the end, I find that most people get into trouble when their actual phones are insecure. Meaning… they either allow or someone just picks up their phone and looks at their messages. In which case, this graphic isn’t useful at all.
A Facebook commenter shared this link, which is a really cool resource that points to the level of encryption/security/privacy of tons of different messaging apps: https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard
Nice. Great chart.
Huge point on the unlocked/unencrypted phone part. We tell our youth camp counselors to leave their phones in the car partly because when a random camper picks up the phone, takes pictures, and sends them to a friend, law enforcement will still look at them first for anything illegally transmitted.
Leave a Reply