Yes, I believe all the messages are in plain text, and it’s up to the server not to log it.
It is possible to e2ee the message content yourself tho.
Edit: it looks like ntfy.sh specifically keeps messages cached in memory for a few hours befor discarding them. https://docs.ntfy.sh/config/
I think a lot of comments have missed that ntfy.sh does not use UnifiedPush, the ntfy server is a UnifiedPush provider and the ntfy app is a UnifiedPush distributor.
I still want to know if MQTT already did this & UnifiedPush is just a startup trying to reimplement the same concept
IMHO UnifiedPush is just a poor re-implementation of WebPush which is an open and distributed standard that supports (and in the browser requires, so support is universal) E2EE.
UnifiedPush would be better as a framework for WebPush providers and a client API. But use the same protocol and backends as WebPush (as how to get a WebPush endpoint is defined as a JS API in browsers, would would need to be adapted).
Sounds like you need a browser tho. UnifiedPush & MQTT work without a browser with WebPush support.
There are three parts to the whole push system.
- A push protocol. You get a URL and post a message to it. That message is E2EE and gets delivered to the application.
- A way to acquire that URL.
- A way to respond to those notifications.
My point is that 1 is the core and already available across devices including over Google’s push notification system and making custom push servers is very easy. It would make sense to keep that interface, but provide alternatives to 2 and 3. This way browsers can use the JS API for 2 and 3, but other apps can use a different API. The push server and the app server can remain identical across browsers, apps and anything else. This provides compatibility with the currently reigning system, the ability to provide tiny shims for people who don’t want to self host and still maintains the option to fully self host as desired.
I never used it, but I would assume yes after reading the frontpage and the doc. At no point there is a PSK set between sender and reciever, not I see any signs for key exchange between devices.
This is not a definitive answer though as I didn’t read the source code of Nfty, nor the UnifiedPush spec.
Regarding encryption of the push message, from https://unifiedpush.org/developers/spec/android/ :
Push message: This is an array of bytes (ByteArray) sent by the application server to the push server. The distributor sends this message to the end user application. It MUST be the raw POST data received by the push server (or the rewrite proxy if present). The message MUST be an encrypted content that follows RFC8291. Its size is between 1 and 4096 bytes (inclusive).
