Following Apple’s defiance under the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)’s intimidation, social media app, WhatsApp, seems to have borrowed a leaf from Apple’s book. Yesterday, WhatsApp announced that it was encrypting all incoming and outgoing messages on its app for billions of its customers, a new feature it termed “end-to-end encryption.” This means nobody would be able to hack into the app to retrieve information.
Perhaps the biggest story in the tech world in the past few weeks was the fight between Apple and the FBI. Apple’s refusal to unlock the iPhone device of a dead terrorist involved in the San Bernardino shootings, at the order of a Supreme Judge, once more emphasised the ethical side of messaging on social networks. WhatsApp, Google and others announced their solidarity with Apple, praising its decision to protect people’s privacy because it would have meant that the FBI could also hack into the private conversations of millions of other iPhone users. FBI eventually had the phone unlocked, through a third party. However, the standoff between both parties started a debate over privacy and how secure your messages are in the tech world.