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Prof. Dr. Dmitrienko talks about contact discovery in mobile messengers on CryptographyFM’s latest podcast

05/26/2021

Do we really need to rely on sharing every phone number on our phone in order for mobile messengers to be usable? What about the privacy risks? Listen to CryptographyFM's latest podcast in which Prof. Dr. Dmitrienko goes more in-depth into this problem.

Mobile messaging apps such as WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram all work relying on this principle.

Contact discovery is a core feature in today's most popular mobile messaging apps. It lets users grant messaging apps access to their address book in order to discover which of their contacts are on that given messaging service. While contact discovery is critical for said messaging apps to function properly, privacy concerns arise with the current methods and implementations of this feature, potentially resulting in the exposure of a range of sensitive information about users and their social circle.

What are the privacy risks, and do better cryptographic alternatives exist for managing that data?
 

In today's podcast, episode 16,  Prof. Dr. Dmitrienko as well as Christoph Hagen and Christian Weinert are looking exactly into this problem, and will tell us more about their interesting results.

 

Listen to the podcast here: Cryptography FM: Episode 16: Contact Discovery in Mobile Messengers! 

This episode can also be found on:
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify

Links and papers discussed in the show:
All the Numbers are US: Large-scale Abuse of Contact Discovery in Mobile Messengers

 


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