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Good news for all Privacy Lovers!! Finally the wildly popular messaging app WhatsApp has made end-to-end encryption a default feature, stepping a way forward for the online privacy of its users around the world. WhatsApp , most popular messaging app with 600 Million users as of October 2014, has partnered with Open Whisper Systems to boost its privacy and security by implementing strong end-to-end encryption on all text messages. The strong end-to-end encryption here means that even Mark Zuckerberg himself can't pry into your conversations, even if asked by law enforcement officials. The app maker describe this move as the " largest deployment of end-to-end encryption ever ." The Open Whisper System is a non-profit software organisation started by security researcher Moxie Marlinspike, who is behind the development of TextSecure app used for encryption. Over the past three years, his team has been in the process of developing a 'modern, open source...

Do you use  TextSecure Private Messenger  for your private conversations? If yes, then Are you sure you are actually using a Secure messaging app? TextSecure , an Android app developed by Open WhisperSystems , is completely open-source and claims to support end-to-end encryption of text messages. The app is free and designed by keeping privacy in mind. However, while conducting the first audit of the software, security researchers from Ruhr University Bochum found that the most popular mobile messaging app is open to an Unknown Key-Share attack . After Edward Snowden revealed state surveillance programs conducted by the National Security Agency, and meanwhile when Facebook acquired WhatsApp , TextSecure came into limelight and became one of the best alternatives for users who want a secure communication. " Since Facebook bought WhatsApp , instant messaging apps with security guarantees became more and more popular ," the team wrote in the paper titled,...

Everyone has cybersecurity stories involving family members. Here's a relatively common one. The conversation usually goes something like this:  "The strangest thing happened to my streaming account. I got locked out of my account, so I had to change my password. When I logged back in, all my shows were gone. Everything was in Spanish and there were all these Spanish shows I've never seen before. Isn't that weird?" This is an example of an account takeover attack on a customer account. Typically what happens is that a streaming account is compromised, probably due to a weak and reused password, and access is resold as part of a common digital black market product, often advertised as something like "LIFETIME STREAMING SERVICE ACCOUNT - $4 USD." In the grand scheme of things, this is a relatively mild inconvenience for most customers. You can reset your credentials with a much stronger password, call your bank to issue a new credit card and be back to binge-watching The Crown i...

Good News for Privacy Lovers!! An open source software group Open Whisper Systems has released the first free and Open Source phone call application for iPhone users, which is specifically designed to make secure and encrypted calls. When we talk about the privacy of our messages and voice calls, Open Whisper Systems has usually a very strong track record. Whisper is the company behind the development of RedPhone and TextSecure for Android, providing encrypted calls and texts respectively to users. Moving on to iOS devices , the company decided to produce simplest and easiest interfaces yet. Better known as Signal , a free iOS app designed to enable easy and strongly encrypted voice calls . The Signal application for iPhone is completely compatible with OWS's time-tested and well-known RedPhone . Eventually, Signal will be a combination of both RedPhone and TextSecure in a single Android application , according to a blog post . Signal makes use of end-to-en...

With revelations of NSA spying and some of the most jaw-dropping surveillance leaks, many people feel unencrypted and central-server service is bad in most of the cases, but end-to-end encryption can be used to reduce this problem. Worldwide Government surveillance raises privacy concerns and acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook also made us think about the security concern with chat applications as well; though it was not so secure previously. People who care about having their SMS and Instant messages protected from prying eyes, now they can use end-to-end encrypted services, like  TextSecure .  It is a free Android-based messaging app, completly open-source , easy to use and designed with privacy in mind. Encrypting the stored data on the servers is as important as transferring data over an encrypted connection, but the most important factor of the encryption is that ' who has the decryption key '. If the company has the keys, then Government could snoop thro...