WhatsApp has today announced the completion of a technological development that makes the app more secure than ever before. Starting today, every single message, file, photo, video and voice message you send via WhatsApp will be end-to-end encrypted by default. WhatsApp partnered with Open Whisper Systems over a year ago to integrate the Signal Protocol into its product and today, that integration has been completed.
“As of today, the integration is fully complete. 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. This includes all the benefits of the Signal Protocol — a modern, open source, forward secure, strong encryption protocol for asynchronous messaging systems, designed to make end-to-end encrypted messaging as seamless as possible”.
The company explains on its blog that when you send a message, the only person who can read it is the person or group chat that you send that message to. No one else including cybercriminals, hackers or government agencies, can see inside that message. Even the company itself can’t see the encrypted messages. “End-to-end encryption helps make communication via WhatsApp private – sort of like a face-to-face conversation”.
Once you have updated to the latest version of WhatsApp, you don’t have to do a thing to encrypt your messages, since end-to-end encryption is on by default and all the time. If you’re interested in learning more about how end-to-end encryption works, you can read about it here.
