Last week brought news that shook the tech industry. Last Monday (25), Twitter accepted the purchase offer made by Elon Musk for approximately $ 44 billion. With that, the entrepreneur is now the new owner of the social network. Before that, however, Musk had posted tweets about changes to Twitter.
One of the most striking was on April 27, when he said that the platform’s direct messages (DM) should have end-to-end encryption, “like Signal [software]so that no one can spy on or hack your messages.”
Experts reckon this would be good news for Twitter and its security standards. However, they also comment that it is difficult to achieve this, since technical changes and security patches must be made in a social network that is “all in one”. This differentiates it from social networks such as Facebook, for example, which has a specific activation for messages (Messenger) and another for the platform (Facebook).
However, aside from the technical downsides, what is the end-to-end encryption that experts talk so much about?
What is end-to-end encryption
In a nutshell, end-to-end encryption is a feature that refers to the protection that messages have from their origin to their destination, so that no third party can know their content.
To better understand encryption, cybersecurity company Kaspersky gives a very simple example:
“The main advantage of end-to-end encryption is the restriction of data transmitted from anyone to the recipient. It’s like when you send a letter: you put it in a mailbox that is physically impossible to open, immune to any sledgehammer, saw, etc., except for the recipient. End-to-end encryption ensures the privacy of your communication.
Dmitry Bestuzhev, director of Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Team in Latin America, previously told CNN that end-to-end encryption is as if your conversation has a unique key to open that only the sender and receiver have access to.
In technical terms, we could say that end-to-end encryption uses the same process as data encryption, which is based on “using an algorithm that transforms standard text characters into an unreadable format.
Which platforms have this mechanism?
There are platforms that have end-to-end encryption by default. That is, without the user having to activate it. This is the case with WhatsApp, Signal (as Musk pointed out) or Threema (a paid application for sending messages).
On the other hand, we have platforms like Facebook Messenger or Telegram, which have end-to-end encryption, but you have to activate it yourself for it to work. In both options, it is necessary to open a secret chat in the applications.
Meta, the owner of WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger, said it plans to implement end-to-end encryption by default for all its apps globally by 2023.
How to activate it in Messenger and Telegram?
In Messenger, you can click on a conversation, tap the “i” icon at the top right of the screen, and select the “Go to Secret Conversation” option. Or open your app, give it the pen icon in the top right corner of the screen, and activate the padlock next to the “new message” caption.
In Telegram, open the app, tap the pen icon at the bottom right of the screen, and tap the “new secret chat” option.
Source: CNN Brasil
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