Skip to content

Push notification metadata as side-channel risk #6

@foxcool

Description

@foxcool

Privacy considerations (Section 8.2) cover metadata exposure per transport but do not address push notification side-channels. The FBI/Signal case demonstrated recovery of deleted messages via Apple's push notification database.
Push notifications (APNs, FCM) transit through Apple/Google infrastructure. Even with E2E encryption, push metadata leaks: message timing, sender/recipient correlation, message existence proof. The headless daemon with Matrix/IMAP adapters will inherit those ecosystems' push mechanisms.
Proposal: add push notification metadata to Section 8.2 with a mitigation hierarchy: UnifiedPush with self-hosted relay (best) → opaque push (no content, just "check for updates") → polling (no push, trades battery for privacy) → native push (convenient, worst privacy). This should be a client/operator choice, consistent with transport trust classification philosophy.

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Labels

    No labels
    No labels

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

    Milestone

    No milestone

    Relationships

    None yet

    Development

    No branches or pull requests

    Issue actions