With governments routinely snooping through our communications on a day-to-day basis, it’s only natural that users are asking for more and more privacy. And privacy they are given. This time by WhatsApp. The company has just added full end-to-end encryption to its app.
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WhatsApp has been onto this over a year. It’s a project that the company started in 2014 with Open Whisper Systems, using Signal Protocol end-to-end encryption.
The final product is full end-to-end encryption of communications and media as long as each side has an updated app. As Open Whisper Systems explains,
[quote]This includes chats, group chats, attachments, voice notes, and voice calls across Android, iPhone, Windows Phone, Nokia S40, Nokia S60, Blackberry, and BB10. Users running the most recent versions of WhatsApp on any platform now get full end to end encryption for every message they send and every WhatsApp call they make when communicating with each other.[/quote]
Anyone with the latest version of the software will get their communications encrypted by default. Potentially this is huge, as there are over a billion active users on WhatsApp at the moment. End-to-end means that nothing is stored on WhatsApp’s servers and the company can’t decrypt people’s communications. Not even if it is forced to do so by the FBI or other organisations.
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The app will show users that their communications are being encrypted, but users will have to have the latest update for the app in order to enjoy its benefits.