Announced today, WhatsApp has completed work on end-to-end encryption for all of its services, allowing users to chat and call in complete privacy.
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The company did acknowledge the added layers of security could make criminal investigations more hard but said it wasn’t willing to risk exposing its users to hackers or cybercriminals. “Fortunately, end-to-end encryption protects us from these vulnerabilities”, the co-founders wrote.
This means that it is impossible for messages to get intercepted as they travel between devices, it also means Companies can’t give information to the government even if it wanted to. Your all communication data will be secured on the server, unless you would love to be completely A-to-Z encrypted like the iPhone. But all you need to know is that end-to-end encrypted messages can only be read by the recipients you intend. “If you’re using the latest version of WhatsApp, you don’t have to do a thing to encrypt your messages: end-to-end encryption is on by default and all the time”, WhatsApp explained in a blog post. And yes, that even includes group chats.
WhatsApp has applied “end-to-end” encryption to all its services to boost user security. The Facebook owned app stated that apart from messages, it would be encrypting the voice calls and file transfers as well.
According to Koum, protecting private communications is personal for him because he was born and grew up in USSR where people couldn’t speak freely during the communist rule.
Whatsapp says that the protection of private communication features among its “core beliefs”.
This is definitely turning to be quite a fierce battle, and with end to end encryption enabled WhatsApp becomes a lot more secure, all in all a win for privacy and the freedom of speech.
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The move by WhatsApp comes after fierce debate over the increasing use of encryption and how it affects law enforcement investigations.
