Some are quick to promote apps as being safe for your use just because they are encrypted. I will talk about how many of the popular apps that are commonly t...
You (as aggressor) scan all your known mobile numbers agains let’s say Signal and discover that some numbers use Signal. That I understand. But now what? Unless you are the company Signal you would not have access to further data, or ?
Sure you can easily get further data by for example asking the phone companies for cell-tower log-in location and times. This you can then narrow down against your list of Signal using suspects and either remotely infect their phones with a trojan or simply snatch up the hardware at a “random” police check and access the already decrypted messages with identifiable phone-numbers of all the group-members.
Compare that to a messenger that does not use phone numbers at all and even does not transmit network IDs to other group-chat members. Then the police has no idea who to target and no reasonable indication that could be used with a judge to get a search warrant either.
Ok, out of interest, how does this work?
You (as aggressor) scan all your known mobile numbers agains let’s say Signal and discover that some numbers use Signal. That I understand. But now what? Unless you are the company Signal you would not have access to further data, or ?
Sure you can easily get further data by for example asking the phone companies for cell-tower log-in location and times. This you can then narrow down against your list of Signal using suspects and either remotely infect their phones with a trojan or simply snatch up the hardware at a “random” police check and access the already decrypted messages with identifiable phone-numbers of all the group-members.
Compare that to a messenger that does not use phone numbers at all and even does not transmit network IDs to other group-chat members. Then the police has no idea who to target and no reasonable indication that could be used with a judge to get a search warrant either.