but the apple fanboys tell me their phone is private!
And the secure “lockdown” mode on iOS disables push notifications for exactly this reason. But the vast majority of people don’t use lockdown mode in their day to day, because it kills a lot of the functionality of the phone. Lockdown mode is intended for people who may actually be targeted by laser-focused hacking attempts. Politicians, celebrities, people with high security clearance, etc… It’s not something that the average person would use.
Apple even publishes this as a known vulnerability. It’s due to the way push notifications work. Similar to SMS, push notifications default to unencrypted because there isn’t a single unified system. Each carrier and cell manufacturer handles push notifications differently, so they’re kept unencrypted so that the public encryption key doesn’t get lost during transit; That would just result in scrambled junk messages.
We’ve known about this for a long time. Google too. Apple publishes it in their transparency reports now.
I was going to say why is this news now? This was a big thing at the end of 2023. Like they even mentioend it in the article.
The practice first came to light in 2023 when Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice
And that is why we use ntfy :)
Not the main instance ofc because then you have one big silo again, but there are plenty of publicly hosted servers.Does ntfy solve this problem?
It’s paywalled for me so can’t see this all. But does this mean signal, rcs and other encrypted messages are being logged? Kind of defeats the purpose of privacy based use cases if so
Yes. 100%. Some app creators will encrypt the contents but I don’t think they can encrypt the metadata.
Even the most “private” of companies like Signal and Proton don’t provide any alternative either. Third-party fork Molly adds UnifiedPush support to Signal.
From Signal CEO:
PSA: We’ve received questions about push notifications. First: push notifications for Signal NEVER contain sensitive unencrypted data & do not reveal the contents of any Signal messages or calls–not to Apple, not to Google, not to anyone but you & the people you’re talking to.
In Signal, push notifications simply act as a ping that tells the app to wake up. They don’t reveal who sent the message or who is calling (not to Apple, Google, or anyone). Notifications are processed entirely on your device. This is different from many other apps.
What’s the background here? Currently, in order to enable push notifications on the dominant mobile operating systems (iOS and Android) those building and maintaining apps like Signal need to use services offered by Apple and Google.
Apple simply doesn’t let you do it another way. And Google, well you could (and we’ve tried), but the cost to battery life is devastating for performance, rendering this a false option if you want to build a usable, practical, dependable app for people all over the world.
So, while we do not love Big Tech choke points and the control that a handful of companies wield over the tech ecosystem, we do everything we can to ensure that in spite of this dynamic, if you use Signal your privacy is preserved.
(Note, if you are among the small number of people that run alt Android-based operating systems that don’t include Google libraries, we implement the battery-destroying push option, and hope you have ways to navigate.)
