This one will be super technical…
Did you ever think on how information flows on the Internet?
You have the user, requesting a website for example “http://facebook.com/messages”,
The top level domain is “com”, then we lookup the domain “facebook” from the top level domain and there can also be a sublevel domain, for example “www”.
Think of it as a huge database of pointers, here’s the workflow:
But what if the government were to be the “middle man” domain, capturing everything that inputs from and to a certain domain?
For example take this workflow:
This is a super high level graph of what could be big brother watching over you. And in this case gov only records, but what if they modify information being sent? What if when you think you are talking to someone, you are talking to a gov officer, or a bot?
This is why SSL was invented, to encrypt data between “parties”. But so many Websites aren’t encrypted yet and unfortunately, shared hosting providers will make you pay extra for an SSL certificate that requires little to no configuration…
(Rest assured, Facebook Messenger is encrypted)