WhatsApp, BBM, not as secure as you think: report

Internet has become an important part of people’s life these days. Most people prefer communicating via Internet, whether it is calling, text messaging or e-mailing. And why not? It’s the easiest and the quickest way of communicating.

However, Recently, Snapchat servers were hacked and more than 2,00,000 nude pictures of snapchat users were sent across to other users. Similarly, Truecaller, which is a popular caller ID and a contact tracker was reported to be hacked and was sharing the contact information of its users. Not just the hackers, our government itself could be spying on you. According to a study, more than one lakh phone tapping orders are issued by the central government every year. 

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Such incidence force you to think how safe your chat messenger is. Everyday, you share a plenty of information with your friends and family via these online messengers, of which a lot of things are personal and private. What if, the information is accessed by someone other than your chosen recipient too.

Electronic Frontier Foundation, did a research to find out the encryption level of various communication technologies. Surprisingly, the most popular online messengers like WhatsApp, BBM, Yahoo! Messenger, Viber, Snapchat, Google Hangout, scored disappointingly low.

Below is the scorecard prepared by Electronic Frontier Foundation that examines dozens of messaging technologies and rates each of them on a range of security best practices. (For the methodology used to conduct the research, click here)

(Out of Electronic Frontier Foundation’s entire list, we have chosen technologies that have a large user base in India, for complete list click here)

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