Young people, the most prolific sharers of personal details and photos over apps like Snapchat, are especially at risk,” said Sherif Elsayed-Ali, Head of Amnesty International’s Technology and Human Rights Team.Īmnesty International has highlighted end-to end encryption, a way of scrambling data so that only the sender and recipient can see it, as a minimum requirement for technology companies to ensure that private information in messaging apps stays private. The reality is that our communications are under constant threat from cybercriminals and spying by state authorities. “If you think instant messaging services are private, you are in for a big surprise. The organization’s new ‘Message Privacy Ranking’ assesses the 11 companies with the most popular messaging apps on the way they use encryption to protect users’ privacy and freedom of expression across their messaging apps. Only 3 of 11 tech firms examined provide end-to-end encryption by default on all their messaging apps.

Facebook/WhatsApp, Apple top privacy ranking of messaging apps.

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