Having been plagued with a seemingly unending stream of recent horror stories around private information being hacked and leaked from online services, one seriously ponders the question, “How safe, really, are the communication tools we so regularly use?”
A study conducted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a non-profit organization involved in privacy, freedom of expression, policy analysis, technology development and other aspects relating to protecting digital rights, reveals a startling lack in security in many of today’s popular communication tools.
Going beyond the standard requirement of having your data encrypted in transit (which prevents hostile parties from determining the contents of a communication even if it is intercepted), there are several other requirements that ideally need to be met before an app is deemed completely secure, end to end. These requirements include factors like:
Is your data encrypted so that even the service providers themselves cannot read it?
Does the app verify your contact’s identities?
Is the app’s code open to independent review?
Is its security design properly documented?
Has the code been audited?
Are past communications secure even if your app’s authentication keys are stolen?
It is these very parameters on which the EFF reviews and maintains a scorecard of common communication apps including Whatsapp, Skype, Facetime and more. Hit this link and find out whether your chat tools of choice are as secure as you think. You may be unpleasantly surprised.
As one of the very few highly secure apps on that scorecard so perfectly puts it:
Cryptocat is not a magic bullet. Even though Cryptocat provides useful encryption, you should never trust any piece of software with your life, and Cryptocat is no exception.
Are there any communication or encryption apps that you can’t live without? We’d love to hear about your experience with them in the comments here, or on our Facebook page.
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