As of: March 17, 2024, 1:50 p.m
By: Sandra Sporer
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The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is intended to guarantee better opportunities for new, smaller competitors.
However, many experts see it as potentially endangering users' data security.
© Antonio Guillem/IMAGO
The Digital Markets Act, which came into force on March 7th, is worrying experts.
This could affect the security of WhatsApp & Co.
Frankfurt – WhatsApp recently introduced an innovation.
The reason for this is a new EU directive.
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) aims to improve competition in the digital services industry and provide better opportunities for new competitors.
For WhatsApp, this specifically means that users of other messenger services must be able to send messages to WhatsApp accounts in the future.
A stumbling block to this interoperability is end-to-end encryption.
Experts see a potential security risk here, as
chip.de
reports.
The EU also recently agreed on a right to repair.
If this regulation finally comes into force, it could have a similarly far-reaching impact as the DMA.
Implementing the DMA is a major challenge for Meta - the group sees its responsibility as more than just its own
Ensuring security when communicating between different messenger services represents a huge challenge. WhatsApp's parent company, Meta, is also aware of this.
“Interoperability is a technical challenge - even when focusing on the basic functions required by the DMA,” states a post on the
topic on the
Engineering at Meta website.
However, Meta does not see the realization of this task as solely his own responsibility.
Rather, user safety is viewed as “a shared task.”
“We will therefore continue to work with third parties to provide the safest and best experience for our users.”
DMA gives experts a headache - could potentially jeopardize encryption security
Meta's concerns about the feasibility of secure encryption between apps are shared by many cryptographers.
According to
futurezone.de
, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) expressed criticism as early as 2022 that interoperability could not be achieved without unreasonable compromises in data protection and security.
The non-governmental US organization advocates for fundamental rights in the digital age.
“Trying to reconcile two different cryptographic architectures is simply not feasible;
one side or the other will have to make significant changes,” Steven Bellovin, a professor of computer science at Columbia University, was quoted as saying by
The Verge
.
The experts also believe that the decryption and subsequent re-encryption proposed by the DMA is not a solution.
It would create a vulnerability where messages could be intercepted unencrypted.
The EU also wants to make some changes to environmental regulations after the farmers' protests.
They should loosen up.
However, cash will be stricter in the future - the EU has introduced an upper limit for payments.
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