Encryption in WhatsApp messages has arrived but... do you know what it means?

Surely in the last two days you have seen on your Windows Phone, within WhatsApp conversations, a message alerting you that these chats were becoming encrypted , something in advance gives a plus of security to our communications, at least on paper.

A message that has been echoed by general media of all kinds and thus we have seen experts express their opinion in the written press, radio, television… with a space even in the news and that is that each movement of WhatsApp, due to the number of users that may be affected, is that… interesting news.

But normally, or at least in almost all cases, the information that appears has been limited to commenting on the novelty, but not what it consists ofnor what it offers, so some users may still have doubts about it, some questions in their internal forum that we are going to try to clarify here.

To begin with, end-to-end encryption is an option that is enabled for all users using the latest versions of the application and that, furthermore, it is not possible to deactivate it in any of the existing operating systems, be they Android, iOS, Windows Phone or BlackBerry.

End-to-end encryption

With this novelty, now if when sending a message only you and the recipient can read said message, not even WhatsApp or its employees they could (the only way someone can read your messages is if you lose your phone).And it is that if before the messages were sent in plain text without encryption (any malicious and knowledgeable mind could read them) now and according to the developers this cannot be done, since each message has its own unique security code needed to open and read the messages.

End-to-end encryption affects text messages, but also monitors and controls the security of photos, videos, voice messages, documents, and callsof voice you make. An end-to-end encryption that works by storing these encryption keys on each user's device and that also works with TextSecure (the system in which they worked from the Open Whisper Systems company) -which uses a protocol that issues a new key for each new message- achieving that those messages cannot be intercepted by anyone.

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For the avoidance of doubt, WhatsApp will notify all users with the famous message on a yellow background that from then on their chats will be end-to-end encrypted.And don&39;t think about downgrading> above, as once activated it won&39;t do any good since messages will be encrypted anyway."

Seeking security in our conversations

A measure, initiated by WhatsApp, which shows the interest in achieving greater security regarding our privacy refers to, so many times called into question by its application, something that has served for other rival options to rise up on the back of this defect, presuming that they are not affected by it, in the case of Telegram, Text Secure or Signal (yes, that application that Edward Snowden recommends) and developed by Open Whisper Systems.

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