The modern world goes around with the encryption. Each and every time a person makes a phone call, buy something on the web or in the shop with the credit or debit card or withdraw cash from ATM. Encryption is the important factor, which paves way for the secure transaction to happen. Electronic payments and online transactions are nothing without encryption.Encryption is about transforming numbers or text, sounds and images into a stream of something different. There are many ways to perform encryption. Some methods are simple and some are complex. Some of the methods involve swapping letters instead of numbers, such methods use math to do a transformation. Any method can be used but the intention is the data stream should not give any idea or hints about how the actual data was encrypted.
Nowadays, mobile phone users are becoming acuter to the potential risks, unencrypted text messaging and other security issues. Some customers prefer the encrypted phone calls for preserving their business’s privacy and others don’t wish someone showing interest in their personal lives.
In this modern era, secure communication with the people and organizations has risen greatly. People don’t know with whom they can share their secret keys easily. This has given hand to the public-key cryptography.
Basically, it allows a person to send a message that only one can unlock it. This can be done by two keys. One is a public key and the other is the private key. A message can be locked by the public key. Anyone can hold that public key. Once the message is locked with the public key, that particular message can be opened with the corresponding private key.
Usually, these keys are the large numbers. The security of the system can be done by some of the mathematical operations. They are easier than other methods.
In the case of the web, the slow public key cryptography is used at the beginning to establish a secure connection between the user and the website. The symmetric system will not suit for this kind of connection because, with this method, there is no way to secretly swap the secret key.
With the secure channel, the symmetric system can be used to share a key and then go through the data passing back and forth.
Safe and secure text messaging apps
The protected text messaging apps are as follows.
- TextSecure and Signal
The exclusive feature of this app is, it allow the users to message to all the people in their contacts even to the people, who don’t use TextSecure.
For security, this app uses the independently developed algorithms. These algorithms apply forward secrecy; with this, a new key is generated for each and every message.
- Open source
This app was created by Moxie Marlinspike, the former Twitter security researcher. This is the only app, which allows the users to message to everyone in their contact even to the person, who doesn’t use TextSecure. This app looks like a replacement for the default messaging option on the phone. This app provides the end-to-end encryption for the conversations, which are made with other TextSecure users. If the insecure conversation happens the users will be informed about it.
There are options available to increase the security in the conversation. This includes scanning encryption keys with the other contacts, and this will prevent the middle-men attacks.
The message is sent via data rather than SMS, this is to avoid storing of metadata with the user’s cell phone provider. Open whisper Systems has plans to release the text messaging services for the desktop version and also the secure phone call for the iOS in the future.
This app is available for free on Android.
- Wickr
The unique feature of this app is, the short-term chats can be made to disappear from 3 seconds to 6 days.
For security, the app has started to work with public independent assessments and placing a big advantage on its military grade security. It maintains a secret user base when the company has received information to release its official information.
People can make use of this app, who wants to hide their messages and photos with others, even from the receiving party also. Metadata is removed from the photos before sending them. The messages automatically vanish after they are read.
Users can share audios, videos and PDF messages with others from their devices or through the Dropbox or Google Drive storage. This app is available free for the Android and iOS devices.
- Telegram
This app is highly secured messaging app. About 100 million people use this app. This app is simple, secure, fast and synced across all devices. It connects people with its data centers across the globe. Users can access their messages with all their devices at once.
This app highly concentrates on the security. This app has its own hacking bounty, which is sometimes considered as a dispute. Telegram is interested to find faults in its application and also tries to fix them as early as possible.
Telegram is also described as Whatsapp by its developers. But this app is highly encrypted, operates on cloud and faster. Users can share photos, videos and other media and messages with 200 people at a time. Secret chats leave no trace on the app’s servers. They have a timer for deletion and they can’t be forwarded. As it’s a cloud-based messaging platform, it is highly secured one.
The Android and iOS users can make use of this service at free of cost. For the desktop and Windows Phone, it is unofficially available.
- Gliph
With the help of the unique group chat interface and access BitCoin transfers, users can converse with the non-gliph users also. And the username in this app doesn’t depend on the real information.
Gliph has an honest feedback about its security. It tells the users when they are about to something. With that warning, people can save their data.
Gliph has some features, which other apps failed to have it. It is the most preferred tool to avoid displaying the data at the public places such as, discussion on the web, posting online, and Craigslist ads. Gliph helps the users to have a secure communication.
From the other apps, the EXIF data can be removed from photos and users can remove a photo from anywhere.
This app is available for the Android, iOS, and the desktop versions.
- SureSpot
This app has multiple identities that will not share key, preferences or contacts.
In the case of other apps, it requires setting a password, which can’t be reset or recovered and they allow viewing their friend’s public keys offline, in order to verify that, there is no one in the middle for attacking the data.
This app has a set of tools for managing the different identities independently on one device. It helps the users to have a separate line for the personal and professional communications. This app is available for free for Android and iOS. To add the voice integration, users have to pay $1.99.
- RedPhone and signal
This app allows the use of the default dialer on android devices it makes the calls secure without having the second thought. These apps were developed to provide secure communication via phone call.
Author Bio: Anand Rajendran is CEO and Co-Founder of Dectar, best PHP scripts development company located in India. Dector is a part of Casperon Technologies a leading social and mobile development company which is Developing Uber for X apps for the past 3 years. I’m a Tech geek, Digital marketing expert, Entrepreneur, and Atheist who loves to write everything about PHP Scripts and mobile application development.