How you can keep your private data safe.


This question must have crossed your mind as well- How were these Whatsapp chats leaked? Are the messages that you write on Whatsapp safe? Can someone else read them? It is claimed that they are "end to end encrypted"

What does that mean?

I'd like to explain all of this in this post "end to end encrypted"

What does that mean?

Broadly speaking, encryption means converting any information into a secret code which cannot be deciphered when read literally 
That is, writing it in a secret language To encrypt it.

End to end encryption means that if you send a Whatsapp message to your friend Then no one, apart from you and your friend can read the message.

Obviously, as long as you have not shown your phone to a third person If you keep your phone with yourself and show it to no one else, Then no one, apart from you both can read the message.

When you send an SMS from one phone to another, it goes through a telecom operator Telecoms like Airtel and Jio can access your messages if they so wish to. In fact, even if the government wants, it is possible for it to access and understand who wrote, what, and when.

Similarly, the email does also not end to end encrypted. Anyone can intercept the emails that you send to someone To intercept means- You do see in movies, that two people are on the phone, talking and a detective is able to hear their phone call and is "intercepting" what they both are talking Similarly, for things that aren't end to end encrypted, it is possible for a third person to intercept and read your email or your message or hear your voice call.

Let me explain it to you with the help of a real-life situation- you will understand better.

Say, you sent a new credit card to your mother and father You stay in Delhi while they stay in Mumbai. And you did give them the credit card but not the pin Now, how will you convey the pin to your parents?

You can make a voice call, but technically a service provider could be hearing your call or a scammer might be hearing your voice call He could intercept your call and find out your pin You could email, but emails too, do not end to end encrypted Anyone can intercept it and find out your pin.

What would you do in such a situation?

There is a very interesting solution to this situation What you can do is send an SMS to your parents There would be nothing in that SMS apart from a number For example, that number could be 37450833 Along with that, send an email to your parents and this email would read that the PIN of your credit card is in the SMS that you sent- the 1st, 5th, 7th and 8th digit in the SMS is the PIN. Combine these digits together- that would be your PIN It is a very creative solution because your parents would have to read both your SMS and your email to figure out your PIN.

Even if someone is intercepting your SMS stealthily, then he would be confused. He would not know that actually the PIN is being sent Similarly, even intercepting the email would not be enough It is necessary to read both the SMS and the email to figure out the PIN.

So, basically, you did an "encryption" here Your SMS was encrypted The instructions of the method of decryption of that SMS was provided in your email

So, imagine your message to be a box and there is a lock on your box. The box has your credit card PIN inside But no one can figure out your credit card PIN simply by looking at the box.

The lock can be opened by a key That key is the email sent by you. The end to end encryption of Whatsapp works in a similar manner. When you send a Whatsapp message to your friend, then Whatsapp encrypts that message, shuts it in a box, and puts a lock on it and the key to that lock is only with your friend in your friend's phone.

In fact, not even Whatsapp has the key

So, not even Whatsapp can read your messages if they are end to end encrypted.

This is the reason why, whenever you open any chat on Whatsapp, there's an option for security. where you can see the encryption option. Whatsapp shows you the security code, Whatsapp basically says that you can compare the security code with your friend And this is the way to match your box with the key to ensure that the right box and key are matched together.

So, now the question is what are the loopholes that allow a third person to read your messages

There are 2-3 loopholes

The first is that if someone snatches your phone physically, or your phone gets stolen. He can open your phone and access your messages because your phone has been physically stolen.

In such a case, what can you do to ensure your security and avoid the loophole?
Put a passcode on your phone. Putting a passcode on your Whatsapp is even better. These days you can put in your face ID or Touch ID in iPhones. You can put in biometric authentication so that another passcode is required to open Whatsapp.

Even if someone steals your phone, first he should know the passcode of your phone before he can access Whatsapp.


Another loophole is WhatsApp groups

For namesake, even Whatsapp groups are end to end encrypted

But if a person that you don't want is added, he can read your Whatsapp messages. 

What's even more problematic than that is that invite links of WhatsApp groups can be sent somewhere else. Say you make someone else the admin of your Whatsapp group

he can invite someone else by sending the invite link and if that invite link is pasted on some non-encrypted web site, or sent through SMS or pasted publicly anywhere
then anyone can click on the invite link and can join your Whatsapp groups and read the chats of the Whatsapp groups.

The simple solution to this is to avoid WhatsApp groups especially the ones in which you're not an admin Anyone can join the Whatsapp group and read chats through an invite link of the group.

The third loophole is the backup of your Whatsapp messages group

A lot of you would know that there is an option to backup chats in Whatsapp, You can keep a backup of all chat history on Google Drive or iCloud to access later, But most of you would not know that the back up involves the removal of the end to end encryption.

If you keep a backup on, you are keeping your messages at risk that a hacker can hack into them or anyone else can read them.

A simple solution to avoid this is to keep your backup off

Go to settings and keep all the different types of backups off

if you want to remain end to end encrypted on Whatsapp.

This is the exact loophole that is suspected in the case of Deepika Padukone.

Investigative agencies took her phone and cloned it and forensic experts retrieved the old data of her phone which had Google drive and iCloud backups where Whatsapp chats were saved Some experts believe that to show her chats on TVand conduct primetime shows on it is a strong violation of privacy.

If the same had happened in a developed country, it would have been illegal. But unfortunately in India, no data privacy law exists until now. The government had tried to bring a data privacy law that I explained.

I'd like to tell you more tips to protect your data and your privacy

First- keep your phones updated to the latest software because most of the time a loophole is found in software.it is on older versions. Hackers target the older versions because it is easier to look for loopholes there.

Second- the auto-download option on Whatsapp that automatically downloads photos and videos Keep it off. Because if you get a message from an unknown number, say they send you a virus in the Whatsapp message then it gets automatically downloaded and gets saved in the photo gallery.

Also, keep all the apps in your phone because it is easier to look for loopholes in older versions

And whenever an app asks for permission to access your photos and contacts, Then do not grant all the permissions Because not all permissions are required all the time.

If there is an app that does not have anything to do with your photos but it asks for access to all your photos and contacts, then what is the need to grant that?
Deny that access. This is fairly easy to do on the iPhone.

Another tip is to keep the two-factor authentication on in Whatsapp. This ensures that whenever you register with your phone number on Whatsapp, In order to do this again, a PIN would be required which Whatsapp will send as an SMS on your phone number and will ensure that the correct phone is used to use Whatsapp and that no one else is installing Whatsapp using your phone number.

I hope you would have liked this post and got to know new things
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