Sunday, November 23, 2014

Do you want to keep your messages private? WhatsApp them!

We all use some kind of instant messaging and most of us know that somewhere, somehow, someone other our intended recipient might read our messages. This bothers at least some of us. Recent developments at WhatsApp, however, may make all of us relax a bit more about privacy.

The Android version of popular messaging app WhatsApp now supports end-to-end encryption, thanks to a partnership with secure-messaging developer Open Whisper Systems. Now, when Android users of the app message each other, the messages are encrypted before they leave the user's smartphone, and only decrypted once they are received by their intended recipients.
Messages with end-to-end encryption can't even be read by the company doing the sending — in this case, WhatsApp and its parent company, Facebook. With iOS and other platform support coming soon, it's a big privacy increase for WhatsApp and its more than 600 million users.

Privacy advocacy group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) recently released a scorecard in which it assessed 39 messaging apps on their basic cryptographic practices, citing seven specific criteria. TextSecure, Signal and RedPhone were among the few to meet all seven criteria. WhatsApp met only two of the seven at the time; now it should meet a third.

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