WhatsApp Now Lets You Hide Your IP Address During Calls (macrumors.com) 17
Tim Hardwick reports via MacRumors: WhatsApp has introduced a new privacy feature that lets you hide your IP address from whoever you call over the encrypted communications platform. As it stands, one-to-one calls over WhatsApp are established as a direct peer-to-peer connection between users. While this ensures the best possible voice quality, it means the connected devices must reveal their IP addresses to each other. According to WhatsApp, the new privacy setting introduced today works differently by relaying all of your calls through WhatsApp's servers to obfuscate your location, rather than connecting you directly to the person you are calling.
Meta engineers elaborated on the feature in a blog post: "Most calling products people use today have peer-to-peer connections between participants. This direct connection allows for faster data transfers and better call quality, but it also means that participants need to know each other's IP addresses so that call data packets can be delivered to the correct device -- meaning that the IP addresses are visible to both callers on a 1:1 call. IP addresses may contain information that some of our most privacy-conscious users are mindful of, such as broad geographical location or internet provider. To address this concern, we introduced a new feature on WhatsApp that allows you to protect your IP address during calls. With this feature enabled, all your calls will be relayed through WhatsApp's servers, ensuring that other parties in the call cannot see your IP address and subsequently deduce your general geographical location." WhatsApp notes that call quality might be reduced as a result of using the new setting. The feature can be enabled under "Advanced" privacy settings in the app.
Meta engineers elaborated on the feature in a blog post: "Most calling products people use today have peer-to-peer connections between participants. This direct connection allows for faster data transfers and better call quality, but it also means that participants need to know each other's IP addresses so that call data packets can be delivered to the correct device -- meaning that the IP addresses are visible to both callers on a 1:1 call. IP addresses may contain information that some of our most privacy-conscious users are mindful of, such as broad geographical location or internet provider. To address this concern, we introduced a new feature on WhatsApp that allows you to protect your IP address during calls. With this feature enabled, all your calls will be relayed through WhatsApp's servers, ensuring that other parties in the call cannot see your IP address and subsequently deduce your general geographical location." WhatsApp notes that call quality might be reduced as a result of using the new setting. The feature can be enabled under "Advanced" privacy settings in the app.
newspeak (Score:4, Insightful)
the new privacy setting introduced today works differently by relaying all of your calls through WhatsApp's servers
YES! Increase my privacy by relaying all my conversations thru the central monitoring servers! Doubleplusgood!
Re: newspeak (Score:3)
Right? Hide this number that reveals at most what company you are at, and usually little more than what country youâ(TM)re in. Instead, have all your data run through the servers of the snoopiest snoops snoopy has ever snooped!
Re: (Score:2)
But hey it's eNcRyPtEd!
(Yes, key exchange is handled by meta, so they have the keys, and they're well documented in actively using them for things like censorship in India, but who cares about the small stuff).
Re: (Score:2)
Keep in mind that the communication is end-to-end encrypted, and using the Signal protocol so is reasonably well tested. Of course it could be flawed, but if they did it right then it's no worse than the fact that it passes through many other networks between you and the other person.
You might be wondering about metadata. Again though, WhatsApp servers are needed to establish the peer-to-peer connection, because most devices are firewalled and behind NAT these days. So no change there.
The most nefarious thi
Doesn't matter to me (Score:2)
I don't communicate with any parties beyond 127.0.0.1.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Doesn't matter to me (Score:4, Funny)
I don't communicate with any parties beyond 127.0.0.1.
(IPv6) "OK, Boomer."
(Telephone) "Oh, is this when I'm supposed to act impressed about a decades old *67 feature? Let me break out my best ooh and aah.."
Re: (Score:2)
E.T., is that you ?
Status quo described? (Score:2)
Coming from the XMPP community, p2p comms have been mostly dead for about 15 years, ever since NATing everything became a thing.
How did whatsapp do p2p calls on IPv4? (hint: it didn't)
Per google (https://www.google.com/intl/en/ipv6/statistics.html) IPv6 is at best at 40% adoption.
On a related note, the one remote party being privy to my IP during a call seems less problematic than gigacorp routing all the content through its datacenter.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That makes sense.
So this is basically step 1 in teaching us that routing through a 3rd party server is "more secure" than p2p connections.
The Five Eyes guys really must miss STUN proxies...
They invented a VPN? (Score:2)
Cute.
Both users behind a NAT? (Score:1)
WhatsApp privacy? (Score:1)