WhatsApp is probably the most widely-used instant messaging service for phones and tablets. It also is the most secure of all the popular instant messaging products although perhaps not quite as secure as some of the lesser-known products. This level of security wasn’t always available in WhatsApp. The service was hacked many times in its first few years. Last year, WhatsApp’s new owners Facebook decided enough was enough. As a […]
Under the Defence Trade Control Act (DTCA), Australians could face up to ten years in prison for teaching encryption. Criminal charges will go into effect next year. The new legislation will make it illegal for Australians to teach or provide information on encryption without having a permit.
Who is monitoring your mobile communications? We probably will never know. However, there are several methods of making such monitoring nearly impossible. How-To Geek has an article showing how to connect an iPad or iPhone to PPTP, L2TP/IPSec, Cisco IPSec, or OpenVPN at http://www.howtogeek.com/215730/how-to-connect-to-a-vpn-from-your-iphone-or-ipad/
Chris Duckett has written an interesting article that describes the inability of law enforcement agencies and other government spies to read your personal data. It describes the ridiculous paranoia of these agencies concerning their own citizens’ rights to privacy. Duckett also writes, “After having their privacy and security surreptitiously broken down for years, there are early signs that users may be getting some of their precious privacy back. It’s been […]
Tor is building the next-generation Dark Net in part with funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. military agency charged with inventing the cutting edge of new technology. Tor plans to double the encryption strength of hidden service’s identity key and to allow offline storage for that key, a major security upgrade. Details may be found in an article by Howell O’Neill in The Daily Dot at […]
Sunday Yokubaitis is the president of Golden Frog, a company that fights for online privacy and to open up a free and secure Internet for people around the world. He has written an opinion piece in The Daily Dot that I would suggest should be required reading by all government employees and especially by our legislators.
NQ Vault is a popular “encryption” program for Android and iPhone. It is listed as a “free download” but that is really only a trial version. To keep using NQ Vault, the user must pay to keep using it. Details may be found at http://www.nq.com/vault. One problem: at least the Android version doesn’t encrypt anything. An article at https://ninjadoge24.github.io/#002-how-i-cracked-nq-vaults-encryption shows how to easy reveal anything that was supposedly encrypted with […]
When Apple decided to encrypt its iPhones by default, the move was hailed as a major step forward for security. Except, of course, by the FBI, which is now saying that such encryption should be outlawed. For the safety of Americans, of course. Do you believe that? Should the FBI and other government agencies be allowed to spy on you?
At SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, Yahoo chief information security officer Alex Stamos confirmed the company will introduce end-to-end encryption to its Yahoo Mail service by the end of this year. “Our users are much more conscious of the need to stay secure online,” Stamos said in a blog post. “We’ve heard you loud and clear.”
The U.S. and U.K. governments are trying to eliminate encryption by private citizens. (See my earlier articles at https://privacyblog.com/2015/01/30/department-of-justice-fears-automatic-encryption-makes-data-too-safe/ and at https://privacyblog.com/2015/02/27/nsa-director-wants-complete-government-access-to-all-encrypted-data/ and at https://privacyblog.com/2015/01/20/white-house-sides-with-uk-wants-a-backdoor-to-encrypted-data/ and at https://privacyblog.com/2015/02/07/u-s-and-uks-mass-surveillance-sharing-program-was-illegal/. The German government, however, has the opposite view. The biggest webmail providers in Germany will soon encourage their customers to use full-blown end-to-end email encryption. The providers, including Deutsche Telekom and United Internet, will next month roll out a browser plugin that’s […]
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