So what exactly is end-to-end encryption?

It’s is a fact: That little orange box in all of our chats is, to most of us, absolutely meaningless. It seems to be a pretty big deal if Whatsapp adds it to every single number we chat with on their app. It caused a bit of a raucous earlier on this year when they released the feature earlier on this year because to some big institutions it is in actuality, a big deal. The real question is: Why?

To know that we would need to know what exactly is end-to-end encryption and why is it necessary? End-to-end encryption is a feature which prevents anyone be it government, Intelligence Organisations, account hackers and even Whatsapp itself from reading the messages that users send. That’s right, nobody can view the messages except the sender and the receiver alone.

Regardless of Whatsapp not having the actual content of the messages, what they do have is metadata. Metadata is just encrypted bits of information that they store in their databases (because the information that you send has to be kept somewhere) and this includes the numbers involved in the conversations and the timestamps of the actual messages. Also if a court orders Whatsapp to hand over all the information it has on a particular user, the court would still have sizeable information to allow them to actual leads on whatever it is they might be trying to uncover.

For those who were curious or at least eye was caught by it, at least now you have a little insight as to what it is for.

SHARE

About Makomborero Marumisa