“The idea is simple: when you send a message, the only person who can read it is the person or group chat that you send that message to”, says WhatsApp, explaining that no one can see the message, and that includes “oppressive regimes” and WhatsApp itself.
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The encryption method lets users see content that has been sent but does not allow service providers, such as WhatsApp, to access the content of the messages. “While we recognize the important work of law enforcement in keeping people safe, efforts to weaken encryption risk exposing people’s information to abuse from cybercriminals, hackers, and rogue states”.
The feature won’t let foreign governments and USA agencies to intercept instant messages and voice calls, even with a warrant. Buried in the fine print is this line: “WhatsApp may retain date and time stamp information associated with successfully delivered messages and the mobile phone numbers involved in the messages, as well as any other information which WhatsApp is legally compelled to collect”.
That means that WhatsApp couldn’t help governments crack your messages even if it wanted to. Once communications with a user are encrypted, the WhatsApp client will now notify the user and refuse to send any unencrypted messages, addressing previous concerns that the system might be vulnerable to a downgrade attack. Recently there has been a lot of discussion about encrypted services and the work of law enforcement.
“This was a tough decision for us to make, but the right one in order to give people better ways to keep in touch with friends, family, and loved ones using WhatsApp“.
The encryption aims to protect users from vulnerabilities and promote the safety and security of data for everyone in the digital age.
With the encryption war getting even more fierce between apple and FBI, Facebook acquired- WhatsApp has chose to step in and make it even more hard for FBI to crack into the uncrackable iPhone.
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“You need to build for a situation where somebody on Android can send a video to an S40 user”.
