The case of WhatsApp chats getting leaked- Neil Sudhalkar (October 2020).
In recent days, you may have noticed the staggering amounts of instances where WhatsApp chats are being leaked. This is most notably seen on national T.V where we see "news anchors" discuss leaked WhatsApp chats between Bollywood celebs. This may be known as an invasion of privacy to some, or just confusing in nature for others. So in today's article, I will be trying to understand as to what “messages and calls are end-to-end encrypted. No one outside of this chat, not even WhatsApp, can read or listen to them” actually means.
As the case of Bollywood celebs getting exposed, and rioters chat messages are being leaked to the general public, we need to know why exactly does this happen, and who is responsible. We, the consumers of this extremely big base of users don't often think about what end-to-end encrypted chats mean. "End-to-end encryption is a system of communication where the only people who can read the messages are the people communicating. No eavesdropper can access the cryptographic keys needed to decrypt the conversation—not even a company that runs the messaging service.In simpler words, I understand that encryption is something which converts the texts you receive or send, into a secret language. No one has access to the book which is needed to decipher the code, not even the creator of the secret language.
Even though we may not have something to hide, we should understand as to why these chats get leaked when these chats are "End-to-End encrypted".
“It is not easy to decrypt encrypted messages. What enforcement agencies are passing off as decrypting messages is more a case of recovering the backup on the user’s phone, and accessing the messages,” says Jajit Bhattacharya, president, Centre for Digital Economy Policy Research. So there are some loopholes which agencies can exploit. For example, WhatsApp routinely asks me and probably you to back your chats up. When you do this, you probably use cloud-based services like "iCloud" or "google drive". Whenever chats leave WhatsApp and are transferred to third parties, the end-to-end encryption comes off. If you follow reports on hackers, you will probably know that these "cloud" services are an extremely easy target. Law enforcement usually may clone the phone of a particular person or just "TAP" it. "Making a clone" is copying someone else phone and copying its data.
After this happens, the chats are then probably leaked to the media.
These recent instances have exposed the loopholes in short messaging services. This includes services like WhatsApp and telegram. This article aimed to expose the loopholes of these services. You may not have anything to hide, and neither do I, but I guess that I am too curious and love to ask these kind of questions. Another question which many other individuals will be asking is "is it even legal to show these leaked chats on national television". Well, yes and no. In many democracies, it's illegal, but here, in India, it is legal. This is because of a lack of privacy based laws in the nation. However, it is still possible for you to protect your privacy. Avoid backing up chats to cloud and try deleting confidential messages from time to time or just send redacted ones on a group chat. It's increasingly important to protect your personal privacy if you support it in the debate of "personal privacy or national interest.
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S
Very interesting & well written article Neil👍