Thursday, April 7, 2016

How To Know If WhatsApp Messages And Calls Are Encrypted Or Not

WhatsApp recently added end-to-end encryption in the app versions that are available since 1st April 2016. Now each message and voice call are fully encrypted that means whatever text messages or calls you make to your friends will be kept private. As a sender you will be sending encrypted messages that can only be decrypted on receiver's end. With encryption WhatsApp has achieved the highest level of security which will prevent hackers, eavesdroppers, ISPs and Governments from intercepting your calls or messages. Even WhatsApp is not allowed itself to check or read your messages.

Each time you share a message or make a voice call through WhatsApp, you are actually sending a scrambled code  protected with a Message Key using AES256 in CBC mode for encryption and HMAC-SHA256 for authentication. WhatsApp uses the Signal Protocol, developed by Open Whisper Systems. We will later post its working in detail. Till the time you should update the app to its latest version.

How To Know If WhatsApp Messages And Calls Are Encrypted Or Not

WhatsApp end-to-end encryption is not something that you can enable or disable. It is activated by default and we do not have to change any setting. But we can check whether the messages we are sending to our friends are encrypted or not.

  • First of all update the app to its latest version. Get it here for android.
  • Now tap any contact and go to contact information.
  • Here you will see 'Encryption'. If there is 'grey broken lock' here then your chats are not encrypted with that contact.

                                             
  • If you see a 'green lock' then your chats and calls are encrypted.

                                             
  • To achieve end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp the sender and receiver should have installed app version 2.16.16.

If you liked the article then please share it.

No comments:

Post a Comment