What Is End-to-end Encryption
End-to-end encryption is a method of communication and sending data in a way that ensures safety from an eavesdropping attack between the sender and receiver. The method does this by encrypting the data that is sent, making it unreadable and undecodable by any human interruption and even impossible to breach by a computer. A good example of this is using a casino site, like Casumo casino. Security and user privacy are obviously of paramount importance to their online casino users. If you as a user input your details, such as your bank details, your computer then converts the text into numeric data and performs a number of irreversible calculations, such as multiplying by powers, using sections of the data as variables for quadratics or even dividing into decimal places. Your computer then sends this new information to the casino website’s server alongside a key, a guide for the server of how to decrypt the information it just received. Your encrypted details and the key will be sent through different routes, meaning that even if someone caught one packet of data, they wouldn’t have any way of using or decrypting it.
Why Does Messenger and Instagram Need This?
End-to-end encryption is a lot of protection against eavesdropping to have on something like Instagram though, right? In fact, social media is perhaps one of the most important places to have this kind of privacy of information, especially messaging platforms. End-to-end means that no executive nor worker within Meta, the parent company of Instagram and owners of Messenger, can in any way access the messages of other users. The only people who are able to read the messages from a user are the recipient of said message. This keeps people’s privacy completely locked down whilst in transit over any kind of distance. In the information age, your data has become one of the most valuable assets that you own and there are many people who will stop at nothing to get to it. End-to-end encryption will make sure that third parties, inside or outside of Meta, cannot eavesdrop on your information and so cannot use it for anything. However, it is important to note that encryption isn’t the only security method employed by an application you use. Encryption covers any data in transit from one point to another and, whilst it makes sure that no third party can intercept the information, it doesn’t do anything for stored data or password protection. For these, many more security measures need to be in place, such as firewalls and DDoS protection for internal servers, and hash procedures for your password and log-in details, to ensure that you are never sending your actual password to the servers themselves.
