It’s no secret that we have a big problem with online privacy. Your emails, your text messages, and even your voice calls are constantly being monitored or censored by the government. If you’re worried that could happen to you, luckily there are now a number of encryption apps and programs out there designed to keep your communications private- no matter what.
What Encryption Does
Encryption scrambles all of the information on an email or other message sender’s device before it travels across the internet. This prevents anyone scanning the привнот messages from being able to read or listen to them. Encryption can also be used to securely store passwords, credit card numbers, or other sensitive information on a phone.
Locking Messages Away
If the message is locked then anybody who tries to look at it without a password won’t be able to see or hear it. This is useful if you have sensitive information that needs to be kept secure and away from prying eyes, but also for keeping conversations between friends private.
Password Protected
A password can be used to encrypt a message before it’s sent, but also to decrypt it after being received by the person you sent it to. This is good for keeping something that was originally meant for one person from being seen by people who shouldn’t see it. Encrypting a message with a password also allows people who choose not to have their messages encrypted to still securely receive them.
No matter who you are sending a message to, anybody trying to eavesdrop on it will only hear a garbled mess without the password. If you choose not to encrypt your messages then anyone who can access them will be able to detect that they’re in code and assume that you don’t want them to see it.
What’s an Encrypted Message?
A message that has been encrypted with a special algorithm is considered “secure”. This means that the message can be kept private and only those who know how to read it are able to.
The codes used for encrypting messages all have “keys” and if you don’t know what the key is then there’s no way to get access to the contents of a message. Without a password, a code is impossible to crack, as it would take millions of years for a computer to try every possible combination in an attempt to open something encrypted with the most basic algorithms. After a message has been encrypted, it can’t be read unless the person trying to access it knows how to decrypt it.
