WhatsApp on Tuesday announced its partnership with Open Whisper Systems will see end-to-end encryption being added to its Android messaging app.
“End-to-end” encryption is the safest option as compared to encryption features used by Gmail or Facebook Chat. The new encryption feature will only give security keys to the message sender and receiver meaning that WhatsApp won’t be able to decrypt the messages itself, even if the company is compelled to do so by law enforcement.
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WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption will make use of the San Francisco-based software group, Open Whisper’s TextSecure that “encrypts your text and chat messages.” RedPhone for Android and Signal for iOS are the other two encrypted voice apps developed by the software company.
“WhatsApp runs on an incredible number of mobile platforms, so full deployment will be an incremental process as we add TextSecure protocol support into each WhatsApp client platform. We have a ways to go until all mobile platforms are fully supported, but we are moving quickly towards a world where all WhatsApp users will get end-to-end encryption by default,” the company said.
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TextSecure encryption feature will be rolled out in the most recent build of the Android app by default. The update will however not include encryption for group chat or mixed media messages. Support for the same will soon be added, Open Whisper Systems confirmed.
With over 600 million users across its Android and iOS apps, WhatsApp is the largest messaging service to adopt end-to-end encryption.
