Privacy

31903 readers

294 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

the encryption keys, why can't the government just sneak on them? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by zaknenou@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

34 comments fedilink hide all child comments

disclaimer: I'm just asking to get understanding of the theory behind network traffic encryption, I know this doesn't happen irl most likely.

Let's take https connection for example. I like watching revolutionary things on youtube and do not wish for authorities to know what I am watching, we accept here for the sake of showcase that google won't sell my watch history if asked (LMAO what am I even saying?).
So if I'm not mistaken since youtube has https implemented, our communication is encrypted, the keys are shared only between me and youtube. But when Youtube shares the key with me/my client the first time, is that also encrypted? Wouldn't the same question keep getting answered until there is something unencrypted? I know this is a bit too much unlikely, but if ISP automated the process of gathering keys and decrypting web traffic for a certain site with them for all users, would that work for them?
I'm taking https here as an example, while I have the same question for like VPN.

EDIT: Thank you everybody. I am not a member of this community, but every comment was a golden experience to read!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Bh sharing, unencrypted, on Lemmy that you like watching revolutionary videos on YouTube, the government now has that data, even if Google wasn't going to give it to them. I thought I would just add that, as everyone else has explained asymmetric encryption well.

Also, usually it's just the content of the website, not the URL itself that is encrypted, so anyone, not just the government, can know what YouTube videos you watch (as the video ID is in the URL) as well as the URL of any other websites you visit.

[–] CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The other 2 commenters are wrong. URLs as they appear in your web browser are NOT encrypted when sent over https protocols.

The only data that is encrypted is POST data, and ONLY if it is sent over HTTPS.

So for example, a website login page crafts a URL like https://some.example.com/login?sessionID=12345678 and when you log in to the site extra parameters like Username and Password are sent via POST data, then anyone listening to your web traffic (like the NSA or your neighbor with wireshark) will br able to see the website and the sessionID, but not the login details as they will only show up encrypted.

However, if the site is ran by idiots who pass the data in the URL like this https://some.example.com/login?sessionID=12345678&username=Homer&password=Simpson, then ANYONE listeneing would have your credentials.