Let’s say I have a phone and I send messages to friends, one through encrypted messaging, and one through un-(non?)encrypted messaging (do these even exist anymore?)
What makes the former more secure? How does one access the latter?
If someone has your phone password they are of equal security of course, but if they don’t then what protections does the encrypted service offer that the unencrypted one doesn’t?
In: 1
End to end encryption means that along the path of traffic, the devices in the middle are unable to view the contents of the information packets that make up your transmission.
A security session between the devices is established, and the data is scrambled in a way that the receiving device can decode it to the original state during that session, but where intercepting it in between is meaningless.
Without end to end encryption, a device in the middle (or devices designed to listen in on wireless mediums) can literally grab a copy of the data stream, rip open the information packets, and reassemble the data inside into usable data. That could be your chat messages, but also could be your bank account information if your purchase transaction wasn’t encrypted.
We’ve reached a point technologically where the extra strain of always on encryption isn’t much of an issue, so there’s really no reason for most applications to not enforce encryption.
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