An expert on cybersecurity has explained in an interview that the encrypted messaging provided by your messaging service, such as the popular WhatsApp, does not protect your privacy in a way that you think it does.
Cybersecurity has revealed that WhatsApp might not be as reliable as you think.
In the aftermath of technological giants such as Facebook and Twitter taking charge and cracking down inflammatory speeches that provoke people to do violence after the heinous attack on the US Capitol, questions are being posed about the recent privacy changes of WhatsApp.
It is not only WhatsApp that is facing a backlash; several other tech giants like Apple, Google, and Amazon are facing some issues after the removal Parler app from their app stores. Furthermore, the download ratings of popular apps like Telegram and the Signal have also gone up in recent times.
We have been told time and time again that both Telegram and Signal encrypt the messages that are being delivered from sender to receiver on a daily basis. As we already know, the idea behind using encryption service is getting your device protected from all the nefarious hackers that want to listen to your conversations.
However, the likes of Telegram and Signal would allow people to spread false information, and even more so, a cybersecurity expert Chris Hamer has opinionated that sending information to a very massive number of receivers would prove to be a demerit of encryption.
Hamer explained that the end to end encryption service (provided by companies like WhatsApp) does disable any attempt of interception between the sender and the receiver. However, in the case of large WhatsApp groups or, shall I say, mass audience, it is difficult to pinpoint who was your intended receiver. So, anybody can receive the message and distribute it any way he or she wishes.
Basically, Chris Hamer was alluding to the fact that the greater will be our audience, the more possibility it generates for the encryption service to become worthless.
In layman’s language, the wider the audience is on WhatsApp greater will be the risk of interception. More people you would welcome in hearing your conversations, the more chance it will generate for an eavesdropper to get access to your messages.
Chris Hamer offered that as long as there isn’t another way to deal with the problem of privacy, we have to limit the number of people we are sending a message to. The purpose of utilizing end-to-end encryption gets pointless the time you give innumerable people access to your messages.
An employee of Sensor Tower anonymously talked to Business Insider about the issue and threw some statistics to solidify the dissatisfaction people have with WhatsApp. He said that the messaging service such as Signal saw as many as 7.5 installations from users across the platforms of Google Play and App Store last week from Wednesday to up until the end of the week. A report from CNBC has pointed towards a similar thing and has said that Telegram had also seen a similar number of downloads (5.6 million) last week.
Meanwhile, the FBI has warned all the authorities and the concerned public that there might be many more instances of violence in Washington D.C. in the days leading up to the President’s inauguration.
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