14 DAY TRIAL // WhatsApp is not playing around and has decided to roll out a surprisingly strong end-to-end encryption feature that is enabled by default for all Android users.
TechCrunch reports that this is the strongest security any major texting app offers, which is a hit to competitors such as Google, Microsoft, and Apple.
For this new feature, WhatsApp has partnered with Open Whisper Systems and is using open source code for building it.
What this means for users is that unlike the messages that you may send via Gmail Chat or even Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp can’t decrypt the message itself. If the government agencies come knocking at the company’s door, WhatsApp can safely shrug its shoulders and wave them off, because there’s no way for them to get a hand on the data.
The service will set up the key exchange between users, but they’re the only ones who will have access to the conversation. If the government wants to get a hand on those conversations and not the scrambled information, they need to get warrants for the actual devices.
Of course, WhatsApp isn’t the first to offer such services when it comes to messaging tools. Silent Text, Telegram and others offer similar encryption powers, but they’re not nearly as well-known as WhatsApp or have as many users. After all, by the last count, WhatsApp had over 600 million users in the entire world and Zuckerberg’s $22 billion bet is quickly attracting more people.
TextSecure, the solution for WhatsApp
Open Whisper Systems it the developer behind several apps, including TextSecure, which is the one WhatsApp was interested in. TextSecure keeps messages encrypted even if an attacker cracks the key at some point. The app has earned a lot of credibility after Open Whisper Systems published the source code and withstood public code audits.
In the aftermath of the NSA scandal, many companies have started encrypting their data, or upgrading the encryption settings they already had on various products. Tech giants such as Google and Yahoo have taken such steps for their email services, for instance, while Apple and Google have vowed to push encryption on iOS and Android to help protect people’s information from snooping.
Edward Snowden and other security experts around the world have said numerous times over the past few years, especially after the NSA scandal broke out in June 2013, that encryption is the only way to keep your information safe from mass surveillance by intelligence agencies. Of course, a targeted attack would be much harder to withstand, but at least there’s some protection.
