Privacy on the internet…. Doesn’t that sound like an oxymoron?

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“Privacy isn’t about something to hide. Privacy is about something to protect!

Nobody wants their confidential, sensitive, and intimate information to be communicated and viewed by others on the net.

Encryption is a valuable privacy tool that allows us to share with the world who we are on our own terms.

An encryption algorithm protects the data we send and receive by altering the legible data into jumbled cipher text/randomized code that hides the information’s true meaning and makes it impossible for the hackers to decipher. The text is made to be illegible, and only those with a secret code or decryption key can decipher it. The algorithms restructure this jumbled data in such a way that a decryption key may readily convert it back to a readable format.


Nowadays, WhatsApp is the most popular and secure instant messaging application and most of its users feel safe when interacting on it. That’s because all the chats are end-to-end encrypted and no third party apart from the sender and receiver can read the messages, not even WhatsApp! Because the encryption and decryption of communications sent and received on WhatsApp occur solely on the user's device, WhatsApp has no capacity to access the content of messages or listen to calls that are end-to-end encrypted. Additionally, the Signal Protocol prevents third parties from accessing personal information. 

Before a message leaves the user’s device, a cryptographic lock is used to secure a communication and only the recipient has the keys. 

There are two types of keys: a public key and a private key. A private key is used to construct an encrypted string to be sent to someone, which is decrypted by the receiver on the other end using the user's public key.


Some of Whatsapp's obligations and policies, though, are easy to misinterpret. Recently, there have been a few instances of WhatsApp communications slipping out. End-to-end encryption, when implemented the right way, is a tough nut to crack and it is near impossible to break into end-to-end encrypted data. 

This raises the question on how, despite end-to-end encryption, the WhatsApp chats can be accessed.

The truth is that they aren’t. The system is backed by mathematical algorithms and checks that make it practically impossible for anybody to reach to the core of the system. Decoding it is a dream. However, simply unlocking the phone provides access to all the messages and once unlocked, all discussions are available and nefarious acts such as taking screenshots, copying them, cloning to a computer and sharing them allow the information to be smuggled out and accessed using forensic tools.


Right now, there is no evidence that Facebook records user messages without the recipient's personal intervention, however, it is worth noting that there is no specific reason why it couldn't. 


Make sure your personal information is “for your eyes only”!

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