NEW YORK: WhatsApp has turned on an encryption system to protect messages sent with the Android version of its app.
Initially, the encryption is being applied only to messages sent via the Android version of WhatsApp. Soon it will be extended to group messages, photos and videos sent via the Android app.
Open Whisper said it also planned to develop versions of Text Secure that work with WhatsApp apps on other smart phone operating systems but did not give a date for when those would be ready.
Facebook acquired WhatsApp in a deal worth $22 billion.
The tie-up marks a huge boost in the numbers of people using Text Secure, which had reached about 10 million, mainly people who had installed the Cyanogens variant of the Android operating system.
WhatsApp said the encryption system would be turned on by default for its huge number of Android users. In October, Facebook completed a $22bn (£14bn) acquisition of WhatsApp.
It said the data scrambling system should make it much harder to eavesdrop on the messages users’ exchange.
Tech firms have faced criticism by law enforcers who said greater use of encryption made it harder to track criminals and extremists.
The encryption system being applied to WhatsApp is called Text Secure and has been developed by a non-profit group called Open Whisper Systems.
“I do think this is the largest deployment of end-to-end encryption ever,” said Text Secure developer Moxie Marlin spike in an interview
Unlike other encryption systems, which often scramble messages only as they travel from a device to the servers that companies use to route them to their recipients, Text Secure keeps the encryption intact throughout a message’s journey from handset to handset.
