Noob answer? No, because the other party will likely store them in unsafe manner and send it through Facebook Messenger to that Aunt of theirs.
First off, it sounds like congratulations are in order! A new life is always cause for celebration! I hope you, your spouse and your new child are doing well.
Short answer to your question: NO! DO NOT SEND ANY SENSITIVE DATA (INCLUDING PHOTOS) VIA ANY PATH, OR SERVICE YOU DO NOT FULLY CONTROL!!!
Long answer: While What'sApp, Meta and the like, are not known to be quite as... proactive as Google in cracking down on child pornography there is the very real risk that any data you send via any service may be scanned via a ML algorithm and flagged. What happens next depends on the particular service. Not sure about WhatsApp, but in the case of Google, once your account is flagged, your entire account is forwarded to Law Enforcement. As you are just sending pictures of your new arrival (Congrats again!), odds are that the officer assigned will take one look at it and clear you. All good, so far, right? Yea, not so much. You might not be going to jail but when Google locks down an account, they do not reactivate it, regardless of what law enforcement might decide, and as they are a private company, suing them to get your accounts reactivated is a lost cause. They are allowed to decide whom they want as a customer so long as their standard is applied evenly and doesn't target certain protected groups.
No service you use should ever be allowed to see anything important to you. Ever.
If you can, I would self host a cloud service like NextCloud out of your own home to share files freely, although an GPG encrypted email would work. Your current email provider is fine, although use a third party email client that supports encryption, like Thunderbird. and much as I like ProtonMail's stance on privacy, I would still use a separate encryption method for anything truly sensitive.
I know I sound like a privacy nutjob, but seriously. When the consequences of a false allegation are that high, you should recognize the threat and act accordingly. I use Google, TikTok, iCloud and others, but if the subject matter is anything much more consequential than the weather, then it doesn't touch their servers. It's not so much paranoia as it is threat mitigation. Google and Apple's services are incredibly useful, but if you depend on them too much, the loss of them could hurt, alot.
Like I said most of the other services don't have quite the reputation for uncalled for lockouts but here are a few news articles I came up with on a quick search:
-
https://www.androidpolice.com/2021/03/08/when-google-locks-you-out-of-your-account-begging-the-internet-for-help-is-your-first-and-last-resort/
-
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/21/technology/google-surveillance-toddler-photo.html (Paywalled)
-
https://www.theverge.com/2014/8/5/5970141/how-google-scans-your-gmail-for-child-porn
-
https://nypost.com/2022/08/22/google-bans-dad-for-sending-pics-of-toddlers-swollen-genitals-to-doctor/
-
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-security/google-flagged-child-porn-case-shows-court-split-on-privacy-30 (Paywalled)
-
https://bringmethenews.com/minnesota-news/innocent-family-photos-or-child-porn-investigators-face-tricky-case
-
https://www.npr.org/2021/08/06/1025402725/apple-iphone-for-child-sexual-abuse-privacy
-
https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-09-19/google-closed-my-account-over-sexual-content-but-theyre-not-telling-me-what-it-is-and-ive-lost-everything.html
If your interested in learning more about self-hosting services out of you home you might check these out as a starting point:
-
https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted (Non-exhaustive list of services)
-
https://selfhosted.show/ (Podcast focused of self hosting services)
-
https://www.howtogeek.com/846979/heres-why-self-hosting-a-server-is-worth-the-effort/
Yeah, I hear ya, but good luck getting your whole family, including elderly relatives, to use something you do control...
It's a losing battle. You can share pics by a secure channel and they'll just repost it all over the place anyway.
but good luck getting your whole family, including elderly relatives, to use something you do control...
That’s one of the things I like about NextCloud. Even the most non-technical person knows how to follow a link in a email (to many an IT tech’s lament). All I do is share the file in NextCloud, maybe password protect it with a simple password, and copy the share link to the email or text message. Bob’s your uncle. Grandma Nosy-Britches gets to see the files but her email or messaging provider (Google, Mircrosoft, or whoever) does not…. At least until she shares the file directly. More likely though she will share the link. But that’s probably not something I’m too concerned about.
You can share pics by a secure channel and they'll just repost it all over the place anyway.
“A secret shared is no secret.” If you have a problem with something being shared, don’t share it. With anyone.
I’m more concerned about accidentally tripping safety or security systems I don’t fully understand and having something I depend on suddenly cut off than I am the vagaries of dear Aunt Noisy. I can pretty well guess what Aunt Noisy or Grandma Nosy-Britches will do and it’s either not a problem or I’ve taken steps to avoid any problems.
-
No. Never use a messenger for those things, that is legally allowed in most nations. They advertise e2e-encryption and stuff, but also need to comply to governments.
Remember e. G. The reason telegram's owner was kicked out of his own country because he didn't comply to leaving a backdoor for the gov? And how it's, in some nations, one of the only few messenger left that can be used to express a free opinion without "dissapearing" after?
With your pics you'll train AI-models for free at best.
I would never ever share personal stuff over some mega-corpo's "free" thing.
but also need to comply to governments.
I dont know about every country, but as far i know in germany at least you only need to disclose the information you actually have. Eg: if you dont have the encryption keys, the government cant do shit with the encrypted messages they habe
So, correct me if im not right, but a messenger could be privacy respecting and legal at the same time
Well, telegram e. G. Still is problematic in germany due to not complying. We in germany might be relatively safe for now, that's true. But don't forget what's at dawn for us. Then tgram & co will be banned and whatscrap will thrieve even more.
I might come across as bitter, but that's only because i am 😁
Signal with a view once message is better than a lot of the available options. Also maybe threema, simplex or session but Signal is more popular nowadays.
