How to securely send your personal information

This story originally ran on The Parallax and was updated on July 3, 2019. A few months ago, my parents asked a great security question: How could they securely send their passport numbers to a travel agent? They knew email wasn’t safe on its own. Standard email indeed isn’t safe for sending...

Signal Testing New Private Contact Discovery Service

Open Whisper Systems, the company behind the encrypted messaging app Signal, is testing a new private contact discovery service that in theory will allow the app to determine if a user has Signal contacts in their address book but forbid its servers from accessing the users’ address book. Moxie...

Apple Receives First National Security Letter

Apple revealed this week that it received a National Security Letter during the last six months of 2016. The news, which came as part of the company’s latest biannual transparency report, marks the first NSL Apple has reported receiving. The iPhone manufacturer released the report via a portal on...

Explained — What's Up With the WhatsApp 'Backdoor' Story?

What is a backdoor? By definition: "Backdoor is a feature or defect of a computer system that allows surreptitious unauthorized access to data, " either the backdoor is in encryption algorithm, a server or in an implementation, and doesn't matter whether it has previously been used or not...

WhatsApp Says 'Backdoor' Claim Bogus

Claims of a backdoor in WhatsApp that could be used for third-party snooping were shot down by WhatsApp, which called the allegations false. On Friday, news outlet The Guardian reported that a cryptography researcher had discovered a backdoor in WhatsApp’s messaging service that could “allow...

How to Start Secret Conversations on Facebook Messenger

If you are looking for ways to start a secret conversation on Facebook Messenger with your friends, then you are at the right place. In this article, I am going to tell you about Facebook Messenger's new end-to-end encrypted chat feature, dubbed "Secret Conversations," but before that, know why d...

Signal Adds iPhone Access to Desktop App

Open Whisper Systems has long offered Android users of its encrypted messaging app a companion desktop version of the service. iPhone users haven’t been as lucky until Monday when the company announced desktop support for iPhone users of its Signal desktop beta app called Signal Private Messenger...

Facebook Messenger adds End-to-End Encryption (Optional) for Secret Conversations

Facebook has begun rolling out end-to-end encryption for its Messenger app, thus making its users' conversations completely private. The end-to-end encryption feature, dubbed "Secret Conversations," will allow Messenger users to send and receive messages in a way that no one, including the FBI wi...

WhatsApp Adds End-to-End Encryption To One Billion Users

The world’s largest online communications company WhatsApp, with one billion users, announced Tuesday it added end-to-end encryption to its entire platform. The move is seen as a major win for security and privacy advocates. It also shifts the encryption spotlight away from Apple and its battle...

Signal Desktop Released by Moxie Marlinspike

In March when Moxie Marlinspike and Open Whisper Systems released the iOS version of the Signal encrypted messaging app, the noted security researcher promised to expand its reach and among other things, eventually release a desktop version of Signal. That vision was realized on Wednesday with th...

TextSecure to Drop Support for Encrypted SMS

Open Whisper Systems is phasing out support for encrypted SMS and MMS messages in its TextSecure messaging product. The move does not spell the end for encrypted messaging for users of the Android app, as the company plans to switch to its own transport protocol to address some of the security an...

Signal 2.0 — Free iPhone App for Encrypted Calls and Texts

An open source software group, Open Whisper Systems, has announced the release of Signal 2.0 — the second version of its free and open source messaging application for iPhone and iPad users. Signal app is specifically designed to make secure and easy-to-use encrypted voice calling. But that’s wha...

WhatsApp Messenger Adds End-to-End Encryption by Default

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...

WhatsApp Adds Encryption by Default to Android App

WhatsApp, a massively popular messaging app, recently added end-to-end encryption for some mobile clients, a move that brings a high level of security to millions of users. The change is the result of a partnership with Open Whisper Systems, the secure text and mobile OS company started by securi...