It’s just the same with people who cross the road wherever they feel convenient, not bothering to use a designated pedestrian crossing. The absolute majority of people prefer to stick to a more familiar and convenient option regardless of the level of security and privacy it guarantees.
In general, the use of messengers proves that people are very lax about their own privacy. So, if you decided to share something very secret over an online messenger, we suggest you urge your interlocutor to use those, which are less popular yet more secure.Īre #messengers able to keep secrets? #Internet #security #privacy Tweet Besides, this way the service developers are not able to access the private messages, what in fact makes the correspondence ‘private’ by design. Also, it’s an advantage if the messenger relies on the open-source code, essentially allowing the user community to identify bugs and vulnerabilities and fix those issues.
Such programs are using dynamic encryption keys, so an adversary is not able to compromise correspondence with intercepted keys. Secure VoIP services are also real: they are RedPhone and Silent Phone, which scored the maximum, and Jitsi, which scored six.ĩ mobile and Internet messaging services offering strong #security and #privacy controls /GWm1XtGFs3Ī truly secure messenger does not resort to encryption alone. Some other messengers, which are equally ‘popular,” like OTR messages by Adium and Pidgin, as well as Retroshare and Subrosa, scored six points. Have you heard of Chatsecure, CryptoCat, Signal or SilentText? Probably not, but they were the champions of EFF’s rating. So does that mean there is simply no such thing as a truly secure messenger? Well, there are a handful of them, but they are not heavily used.
There is only one popular and at the same time relevantly secure videochatting app – Apple Facetime, which scored four points. Is Microsoft reading your Skype instant messages? As for Telegram developers, they seem to have started to read users’ correspondence and block undesirable channels (those alleged to have ties to terrorist organizations). Of all relevantly popular messengers, only two were found to be acceptably secure: Apple iMessage, which scored four points and Telegram with the result of five points. Also, due to the proprietary nature of the code, the vulnerabilities can be discovered and patched only by the company’s staff – all of these factors were considered during the assessment by EFF. Moreover, developers in the companies are, in fact, able to read your private correspondence. The ubiquitous WhatsApp was also awarded only two points, but there is a possibility that this messenger will finally do its homework and soon get a higher scope for the reliability of encryption – after a protocol by Open Whisper Systems becomes fully supported by WhatsApp.ġ1 Unsecure Mobile and Internet Messaging Apps #security /0BEAH3cFAVĪll of the above messengers do encrypt communication, yet none of them changes encryption keys or verifies the interlocutor’s identity. Unfortunately, Skype, AIM and Blackberry Messenger attained merely one point, whereas Viber, Google Hangouts, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat scored as high as just two points. The highest score a secure messenger could get was seven points. Research by Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) showed that the majority of popular messengers do not boast high security levels. The skeptical treatment messengers receive from so many users is totally justified. #IFA15: 77% of all users wish to have protection from tracking their privacy Information. It would be useful to find out how many of them actually saw their data exposed online, yet the stats did not cover this information. At the same time, 37% of participants prefer online messengers, 25% are into social network messengers and 15% frequently use VoIP.īesides, 17% of users employ electronic means of communication to exchange private and critical data. Recent research, commissioned by Kaspersky Lab and conducted by B2B International, showed that 62% of respondents don’t think online messengers are secure, 61% don’t trust VoIP services and 60% don’t feel protected when conversing in a video chat. However, this happens every day by many of us without a second thought or consideration of consequence. It goes without saying that it’s a bad idea to use insecure means of communication. What is the best channel to exchange private information on? Or even better, what channels should you avoid using for this type of sharing?
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