

Soon after WhatsApp hit 1 billion users, they broke hearts at the announcement that older devices will no longer to supported after the end of 2016. The changes started with the announcement that WhatsApp will no longer charge a Subscription fee for the service. WhatsApp has experienced a busy 2016 so far with a number of drastic changes implemented in such a short period of time. WhatsApp is now the poster boy for online security following their Encryption bombshell. The message from WhatsApp to any government intending to spy on its citizens’ private conversations is crystal clear – NOT IN MY HOUSE!Īs we welcome WhatsApp to the ranks of instant messengers that have put some effort is securing the billions of messages exchanged daily, we bring you a modest list of 5 apps which have incorporated end-to-end encryption into their security protocol: WhatsApp Luckily the court procedure was ditched by the FBI who contracted an Israeli company which managed to unlock the smartphone leading to an abrupt close a legal privacy precedence nobody is yet prepared to deal withīut before the dust of Apple Vs FBI had died down, WhatsApp Messenger, the most popular Instant Messenger on the planet at 1 billion users set the internet abuzz when they enabled complete end-to-end encryption on the app covering messages, audio, video, calls and shared files. Apple reasoned that the loss of consumer confidence due to compromised security could severely hurt their brand. The FBI wanted the encrypted smartphone unlocked and Apple declined to oblige foreseeing a revolving door of requests from other government agencies were they to do so. “We want as many people as possible to have the capability embedded within their apps so that nobody can get your information,” Marlinspike says.The world watched with bated breath at what appeared to be a protracted battle between Apple Inc versus America’s Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) over the San Bernardino shooting suspect’s recovered iPhone.
#CRYPTOCAT IPHONE ANDROID#
WhatsApp recently incorporated Open Whisper System’s code into the Android version of its app. This means anyone can go to GitHub and use the source code to create encrypted apps. But Signal hits all seven of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s criteria for security on its Secure Messaging Scorecard.Īdding to the frustration of the NSA in its fight to get at your data, Signal’s code is open source. There are other encryption apps and tools out there, such as CryptoCat, iMessage or PGP (pretty good privacy) made to protect your privacy. We want to make it hard to get your information to the point that it’s not worth going after,” Marlinspike says. “The idea is to scramble the information so well that it’s not worth pursuing. He started cloud-based password-cracking service ChapCrack and formerly ran Twitter’s security team. Marlinspike knows his way around encryption technology. “Even if we wanted to, we can’t hand your information over to anyone,” Founder Moxie Marlinspike tells me over the phone. Signal was created to make that sort of mass collection too difficult to pursue. citizens from several Silicon Valley tech giants. Meanwhile, several tech companies have decided to take privacy measures into their own hands after the revelations from Edward Snowden that the NSA was capturing the private data of U.S. Recent security breaches and other events have prompted a number of apps to emerge that promise encrypted communications between mobile phones. The Dutch SIM card manufacturer Gemalto is just one company among many of the alleged government hacking operations. The plan is to combine those two into one Android app for Signal users.

#CRYPTOCAT IPHONE FOR FREE#
The second version of the app, which launched this week on the App Store, makes it possible to send encrypted group, text, picture and video messages for free from iPhone to iPhone. For those who want to share with their friends on Android, the community organization currently has two Android apps - TextSecure and RedPhone - that need to be combined to do the same thing as Signal does on iOS. TextSecure is the text message solution and RedPhone is the encrypted phone-call solution. Don’t want someone else handing your text messages, pictures, video or phone conversations over to the government? There’s an app for that.Īn iOS app called Signal is a project out of Open Whisper Systems, a not-for-profit collective of hackers dedicated to making it harder for prying government eyes to get a hold of your information. It gets high marks from both the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation as a comprehensive solution for protecting your privacy.
