WhatsApp Privacy and End-to-end Encryption Technique

It seems that everybody nowadays is concerned with privacy. Whether we are talking about social networks, messaging apps or any phone communication, the hot topic of the moment is online security. WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps, having more than 1 billion people using it every day. According to their declaration, they are doing everything they can in order to protect their users’ privacy.

Owned by Facebook

One issue that is worrying lots of users is the fact that WhatsApp is owned by Facebook. There seems to be a general sense of lack of trust when it comes to the most successful social network of the moment, and this seems to transfer to WhatsApp to. There has even been quite a discussion a couple of months ago, when WhatsApp tried to transfer some users data to the parent company along with a new update they released.

End-to-end encryption

The company took great pride in the fact that they now offer end-to-end encryption. This technique of ensuring privacy for the users basically “seals” the conversation, and the contents are available only to the sender and the recipient. According to their declarations, not even the team itself can access the contents, so any text, picture or video is completely safe.

So what’s the problem?

There have been many discussions in the media regarding this rule of no access to other people’s contents. Of course, the companies are trying to offer the best security for their users, but what happens when the authorities actually need to read them? One such example was when Apple refused to give the FBI access to the iPhone 5C used by the shooters at San Bernardino, on the grounds that it violates their users’ privacy. There are various opinions on this topic, but until we reach a moral and legal conclusion, every messaging app is doing its best to keep the contents safe, or so they claim.