Privacy on social media platforms has been a concern for a lot of people and it was further aggravated by the FBI-Apple issue about breaking into an iPhone. The phone was later on hacked by FBI itself and this painted a picture where we are living in insecure times as we continue to use web services.
This prompted social networks to beef up their security and it was earlier reported that the likes of WhatsApp will extend their encryption to other services they offer. This is now official as Wired reported that WhatsApp added end-to-end encryption to every form of communication that is done within the platform.
This is a giant leap by the company which has 57 engineers who have been able to turn on encryption for a service that has over a billion active users worldwide. If you and your friends update to the latest version of WhatsApp, every photo, video, voice calls or text will be encrypted, even between cross platform versions of the app. Apparently your chats on WhatsApp are so secure, its own employees are not able to read whatever is being sent on the network.
If you update your WhatsApp, you will see the following notice: Messages you send to this chat and calls are now secured with end-to-end encryption. Tap for more info
When you tap on the message, it generates the following pop up notice:
When you click on “verify”, it will generate a QR Code where your friend can scan to verify the end-to-end encryption.
If the connection is end-to-end- encrypted, you will get this notification when you complete the scanning process.
“Building secure products actually makes for a safer world, though many people in law enforcement may not agree with that” Brian Actor, WhatsApp co-founder told Wired. Out of the 57 engineers who work at WhatsApp, only 15 people apparently worked to switch on encryption for the over a billion users on the chatting service which is amazing.
This means from now on, you can chat on WhatsApp knowing that the chats you are conducting on the platform are now secure.