#secure messaging apps

Secure messaging keeps your private data safe and secure by using advanced technologies, like end-to-end encryption (E2EE), so that unintended recipients or hackers can’t access your conversations. End-to-end encryption works by scrambling your conversation, so that only the sender and the receiver have the keys to unlock and read it. E2EE technology is applied not only to text messages but also to audio and video files, and attached files. Self-destructing feature of secure messaging apps also provides an extra layer of safety to your private messages. They disappear after a set amount of time, so outside parties cannot access your messages in case your mobile phone or device is lost or stolen.   

As opposed to the traditional approach to mass communication, such as social media, secure messaging apps let you enjoy private conversations with your contacts. The apps offer you a way to curate content for a more intimate group of followers. Certain secure messaging apps, such as ShadowNest, allow you to share content anonymously. The content may self-destruct once viewed, or after a certain amount of time set by the user. ShadowNest goes beyond secure messaging, it’s the truly untraceable messaging app which is designed to secure your feelings and emotions. It is based on Ethereum blockchain with E2EE capabilities. To further enhance your security, ShadowNest does not store the user data on its servers, so even ShadowNest cannot access your data at any time.   

No single point of failure  

With ShadowNest secure messaging app, your information remains completely secure and private, and protected by the operator’s robust security measures and blockchain technology. As the secure messaging app adopts a blockchain’s decentralized technology, there is no single point of failure or centralized data storage, preventing large-scale hacks or leaks. The app provides a censorship-resistant, decentralized network structure for private communication. Private keys are generated at the start of the conversation, and destroyed at the end of the session, so even ShadowNest cannot see your messages or hear your conversations.   

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Data Privacy Coalition

                           Data Privacy Coalition

WhatsApp’s collaborating with Open Whisper Systems taking end-to-end encryption to their billion user’s communications. Also the developer of Signal- an open source mobile messaging platform, Open Whisper Systems When offered end –to-end encryption protocol to WhatsApp, a lot of people started using it without even knowing much about it.

No doubt, this collaboration is a great step toward protecting user’s privacy, but here in this article, we will talk about why we still recommend signal over WhatsApp even though they both use end-to-end encryption.

Encryption, along with being a critical aspect of security, as it depends a lot upon how the data encryption protocol is integrated. With an open source software, any code developer can review to verify its authenticity and ensure that the application do not have any malicious code. On the contrary, software that are closed source, needs a claim of trust from its developers.

Even though WhatsApp relies on Signal’s data encryption protocol that is open source, for encrypting user’s communications, the application itself is closed source. Undoubtedly, Open Whisper Systems properly integrates the protocol into WhatsApp, but its closed source environment of the application stops us from the identification of its other aspects, which could be a possible threat to our security.

On the other hand, Signal is open source, which means anyone can verify that the communications are end-to-end encrypted, along with the facility of reviewing the overall application’s security.

Secure data storage :

Signal protocol integrating into WhatsApp is merely a communications protocol, meaning that it can only encrypt the data in transit. WhatsApp, doesn’t offer data encryption to message history, stored on our mobile phones.

Signal renders this by offering its users, the option of encrypting messages that are stored on phones with a specific passphrase which protects messages from any third-party user gaining access to the user’s device. On the other hand, WhatsApp, do not allows any user to encrypt the messages pre-stored on his phone.

Verification :

An important aspect of data security is the knack to validate, whether communications are being revived by the intended recipient only. Without such feature, it can for any third –party to intrude our network, decrypt the messages, or even, re-encrypt them to relay it back and forth. Such attack is often called man-in-the-middle attack.

In such scenario, recognition of the correspondent’s voice do not completely justifies the encryption of user’s communication. For this, we need a special kind of cryptographic verification mechanism.

Both Signal and WhatsApp offers identity verification for text messages and voice calls. For messages, relying on same mechanism: users get to compare the identity key fingerprints, after which the verified contact can be verified. However, for audio calls, the work mechanism of both the applications is quite different. With Signal voice encryption it becomes quite easy for the users, the verification of any call by reading two word to ensure that they match. On the other hand WhatsApp’s call verification, depends upon users to have done the verification previously by the comparison of fingerprints.

Business model :

Where Facebook is the owner of WhatsApp, Open Whisper Systems owns Signal. Both own a very contrasting business model.

We all are well-aware of the fact that advertising is the core part of Facebook’s business model, fueled by tons of data which users easily hand over without even thinking about its ill-effects. On the contrary, Open Whisper Systems which is a team of non-profit, software developer’s motive is to improvement data security, along with making it quite easy for its users.

While the protocol encrypts all the communications, it do not encrypts the metadata – like the contacts and more. Facebook’s willingness for implementing data encryption in WhatsApp, that restricts even the company from accessing users’ data, makes us all wonder, whether the values are being implemented or not.

Even though, Advertising gives an impression of being harmless, it is very important to keep in mind that we don’t own a complete control of our profiles, despite the fact that it is created by us.  Thus, profiles cannot be counted as 100%. Irrespective of profile’s accuracy, research proves that creating a profile may lead to several discrimination. Where it is not clear about the extent of users’ metadata being hampered by Facebook’s advertising model, it is a crucial point of concern for data privacy. Talking of Open Whisper Systems not being in any data business, Signalassures to encrypt its metadata as well.

With that said, it is important to talk about Signal’s support for Google Cloud Messaging that also means that Google — playing a massive role in data business — do not have access to the metadata shaped by Signal. Even after knowing the IP address of a device, Signal’s architecture is made in a way that hides as much data as possible.

Tags : Data Privacy , Secure messaging apps, Prevent Your Data, Boom of 2019 to secure your data ,

By Kevin Roose, NY Times, July 6, 2017

In a bygone analog era, lawmakers and corporate chiefs traveled great distances to swap secrets, to the smoke-filled back rooms of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, or the watering holes at the annual Allen & Company conference in Sun Valley, Idaho.

But these days, entering the corridors of power is as easy as opening an app.

Secure messaging apps like WhatsApp, Signal and Confide are making inroads among lawmakers, corporate executives and other prominent communicators. Spooked by surveillance and wary of being exposed by hackers, they are switching from phone calls and emails to apps that allow them to send encrypted and self-destructing texts. These apps have obvious benefits, but their use is causing problems in heavily regulated industries, where careful record-keeping is standard procedure.

“By and large, email is still used for formal conversations,” said Juleanna Glover, a corporate consultant based in Washington. “But for quick shots, texting is the medium of choice.”

Texting apps are already creating headaches on Wall Street, where financial regulations require firms to preserve emails, instant messages and other business-related correspondence.

In March, Christopher Niehaus, an investment banker with the Jefferies Group in London, resigned from his job and was fined nearly $50,000 by British regulators after disclosing confidential client information to a friend over WhatsApp. Deutsche Bank barred its employees from texting and using WhatsApp on their work phones in an effort to curtail underground communication. And last year, prosecutors charged Navnoor Kang, a portfolio manager at the New York State Common Retirement Fund, with securities fraud, accusing him of taking bribes as part of a pay-to-play scheme. According to the indictment, Mr. Kang and his co-conspirators plotted their deeds over, you guessed it, WhatsApp.

The appeal of these apps is no big mystery. Cyberattacks on prominent people--like the 2014 hack of Sony Pictures executives and the WikiLeaks release of emails from John D. Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s former campaign chairman--have put the Davos class on high alert. And President Trump’s election in November led to a boom in business for encrypted texting apps among those who feared he would intensify surveillance tactics. Whether they are trying to evade the law, arrange fragile deals or just talk candidly without fear of being snooped on, business executives and other leaders have many reasons for wanting a private back channel.

“After the 2016 election, there’s an assumption that at some point, everyone’s emails will be made public,” said Alex Conant, a partner at the public affairs firm Firehouse Strategies and a former spokesman for Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Most people are now aware, Mr. Conant said, that “if you want to have truly private conversations, it needs to be over one of those encrypted apps.”

For now, America’s elites seem to be using secure apps mostly for one-on-one conversations, but the days of governance by group text might not be far-off. Last year, a group affiliated with Britain’s Conservative Party was discovered to be using a secret WhatsApp conversation to coordinate a pro-”Brexit” messaging campaign, while a separate WhatsApp group was being used by politicians backing the Remain effort. Steve Baker, the Conservative member of Parliament who led the pro-”Brexit” group, told The Telegraph that WhatsApp was “extremely effective” as a tool for political coordination.

Encrypted chat and email programs have existed for years, but many were clunky and hard to use. That changed when WhatsApp, a messaging program owned by Facebook with more than a billion users, turned on encryption by default for all of its users last year, making it simple for even the tech-averse to talk securely.

Few issues produce bipartisan consensus in Washington these days, but the secure messaging trend has drawn criticism from all sides. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, recently filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging that Mr. Trump and his associates were “ignoring or outright flouting” public records laws by using texting apps like Confide. Judicial Watch, a conservative group, sued the Environmental Protection Agency over its staff members’ reported use of Signal, calling the app’s popularity among government workers “disturbing” and saying that it “may make it difficult for their work to be overseen.”

“It’s a serious issue that part of the legal record is being destroyed,” said John Wonderlich, the executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a group that advocates open government. “Lots of record-keeping requirements don’t work very well at all for the modern world.”

Secure chats are especially tough to regulate, because they leave few traces by design. But scrutiny of the practice is growing. In March, David S. Ferriero, the nation’s archivist, sent a memo to officials at federal agencies reminding them that they were “responsible for properly managing electronic messages that are federal records” across a wide range of communications systems.

Representative Mike Quigley, Democrat of Illinois, recently introduced the Communications Over Various Feeds Electronically for Engagement (or Covfefe) Act, which would extend the reach of the Presidential Records Act to include social media posts and other digital records. Despite the groaner of a name, a cheeky reference to Mr. Trump’s now-infamous misspelled Twitter post, Mr. Quigley’s bill addresses a very real issue: As of now, tweets and other social media posts are not explicitly named as protected records.

Daniel Jacobson, a White House lawyer during the Obama administration, told me that the use of apps like Signal and Confide among Trump administration officials might technically amount to criminal activity, under laws that prohibit the destruction of government property. And while White House staff members are unlikely to go to jail for texting, he said that preserving public records was an essential democratic norm, no matter which apps officials use.

Infographic: 2017’s Most Secure Messaging Apps

With any communication that is made online, the security of the platform through which it is delivered should be of paramount importance. An instant messaging platform can only consider itself secure if it encrypts messages before they leave the sender’s device and remain encrypted even if a hacker intercepts the message during the exchange.

2017’s Most Secure Messaging Apps

No messaging platform…

Best Secure Messaging Apps For mobiles

Secure Messaging:

Apps For android and iOS Devices having most secure messaging features:

ChatSecure + Orbot ChatSecure uses well-known open source cryptographic libraries to protect your conversations from prying eyes. But if the person you are chatting with is not using an OTR-compatible messaging client like ChatSecure, your communications cannot be secure. Like most of the IM clients, it can…