By Brian Howey
Tower Staff Writer

Lock up your backdoors and turn on your screens, kiddos. It’s time for another lesson in privacy protection.

Text messaging is one of the most popular forms of communication today.

But snooping eyes can easily intercept your texted conversations, and your service provider keeps a record of every text you send.

Enter the end-to-end encrypted messaging service.

Messaging services which send your messages over the internet can encrypt those messages to protect them from interception.

But remember that this does not protect your messages from being seen if your phone has been hacked.

Also, not all encrypted messaging services are equal.

Take Whatsapp, for example.

One of the most popular internet messaging services, Whatsapp touts a privacy-friendly, encrypted messenger façade.

Whatsapp’s parent company, Facebook, is widely known for openly sharing user data with both government and private organizations.

The popular messaging service uses vague language in its privacy statement which states that some user information is shared between Whatsapp and Facebook. However, what exactly Whatsapp shares with its parent company isn’t completely clear.

In its user agreement, Whatsapp makes no promises as to whether they will tell you if they have been served a warrant demanding user information, nor do they publicly require a warrant before giving said information to law enforcement.