Chatting on Whatsapp anonymously?
January 20, 2015 11:52 PM Subscribe
Is there any way I can chat on Whatsapp anonymously with a group of my friends?
I have some friends who I'd like to chat with. Problem is, they live in Sweden and have reason to believe they are under surveillance because one of them was a whistle-blower against a major corporation with strong ties to the government. Their preferred mode of communication is Whatsapp, oddly enough. Since I hold a Swedish citizenship, I'd like to chat with them without risking surveillance myself. Any secure way to do this (something that would mask my existent number or provide me with a fake number)? I'd appreciate a step-by-step way to do this.
I have some friends who I'd like to chat with. Problem is, they live in Sweden and have reason to believe they are under surveillance because one of them was a whistle-blower against a major corporation with strong ties to the government. Their preferred mode of communication is Whatsapp, oddly enough. Since I hold a Swedish citizenship, I'd like to chat with them without risking surveillance myself. Any secure way to do this (something that would mask my existent number or provide me with a fake number)? I'd appreciate a step-by-step way to do this.
This might be overkill, however consider not using your burner phone at home and leaving your own smartphone at home when you go somewhere else to use the burner phone.
posted by yoHighness at 4:44 AM on January 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by yoHighness at 4:44 AM on January 21, 2015 [1 favorite]
Following up on yoHighness's point, you should also remove the battery from the burner unless you are are at said remote location. Phones can be tracked even when "turned off."
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:23 AM on January 21, 2015
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 7:23 AM on January 21, 2015
Last I checked, end-to-end encryption on Whatsapp was not rolled out to all users, as it needs to be implemented and deployed for every version of the client.
From Moxie in November 2014:
Yes, clients need to negotiate encryption capability until all clients
support encryption. We'll be surfacing this into the UI for each client
once protocol support is complete on that client. Rolling something
like this out to 600MM+ devices is an incremental process that takes time.
https://moderncrypto.org/mail-archive/messaging/2014/001140.html
posted by Adam_S at 7:28 AM on January 21, 2015
From Moxie in November 2014:
Yes, clients need to negotiate encryption capability until all clients
support encryption. We'll be surfacing this into the UI for each client
once protocol support is complete on that client. Rolling something
like this out to 600MM+ devices is an incremental process that takes time.
https://moderncrypto.org/mail-archive/messaging/2014/001140.html
posted by Adam_S at 7:28 AM on January 21, 2015
This thread is closed to new comments.
So, the content of your messages, if you trust both Whatsapp and Moxie Marlinspike, is already secure. As to the metadata you're worried about re: user identification and phone number etc, you can probably buy an off-the-shelf smartphone with a Pay As You Go SIM in cash, install WhatsApp and you'll be effectively unidentifiable.
posted by Happy Dave at 3:24 AM on January 21, 2015 [1 favorite]