Whatsapp Messenger becomes ‘snoop-proof’

The world’s largest messaging app, WhatsApp which is owned by Facebook, has beefed up its security feature for users around the world across all platforms.

Details:

• All private communications now would be protected by enabling end-to-end encryption.
• The new feature will allow users to access messages while barring everybody else, including government agencies, from snooping.

Using Textsecure, WhatsApp launched encryption of messages in 2014, but this was limited to Android devices. Indian security agencies had difficulty tracking these messages on these devices. The latest announcement is part of the company’s plan to use encryption on platforms such as iOS and Windows.

User base: 

The company currently has around one billion registered users, nearly 100 million of them in India.

Background:

This comes at a time when the U.S. government had asked Apple to provide a backdoor entry into encrypted iPhone, which was denied by the company. With the new security feature, the debate on use of encryption is likely to get louder.

Last September, the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) had come out with a draft National Encryption Policy that proposed to make it mandatory for every citizen to save all digital communications, including e-mails and chats, for a period of 90 days. But the proposal was withdrawn in the wake of protests.

Concerns:

• Security agencies fear that strong encryption will allow criminals and terrorists to communicate safely.

But technology companies and many free speech advocates believe that encryption allows more privacy in the new digital age.