My Facebook messenger wants to end-to-encrypt my messages but I don’t know what that means. I tried googling but still don’t get it, I’m not that great with technology. Someone please eli5
In: Technology
To keep it simple and avoid all of the techno-lingo, end-to-end encryption means that whatever you are sending is encrypted on your end, and it isn’t decrypted until it gets to the person you’re sending it to.
What this means is that if someone manages to copy/steal your message, they won’t be able to read it. It doesn’t matter if they work for Facebook, they won’t have access to your message.
They’ll know you sent one, when you sent it, who you sent it to, and the approximate size of the message, but that’s it.
There’s a *lot* more to it than that, but that’s the ELI5 version.
Computer encryption is like locking your message up inside a magic box that only you and the person you want to send the message to are able to see through.
Previously, your messages were sent to Facebook, and Facebook would lock them in a magic box that only Facebook can see into, and then they would unlock the box at the other end and hand the letter to your friend. This isn’t good because at any point Facebook can read all your messages.
End to end encryption means you and your friend now have your own magic boxes. You can lock your message inside your own magic box before you give it to Facebook, so now Facebook can’t see your messages. And Facebook just hands your locked magic box over to your friend and only then does your friend unlock it.
This is much more secure because even if somebody in the middle steals or copies your magic box and its contents, they can’t see inside it.
You send a letter to someone. Only you and your destination can read it.
No one can open, read the letter in any way
Imagine Alice has a message she wants to send to Bob and she doesn’t want Charlie or David to see it. We’ll pretend like envelopes are impossible for anyone except the recipient to open (they’ll be like encryption in our example).
First lets start with the simplest example an unencrypted message. If she writes her message on a post card and hands it to Charlie to give to Bob Charlie can read it then pass it to David who can also read it and then hand it to Bob who reads it, too. Everyone got to read the unencrypted message.
Next she writes her message on a post card and hands it to Charlie who places the post card in an envelope and hands the envelope to David who then takes it to Bob. While the message was in an envelope and David couldn’t read it since Charlie put the post card in the envelope so he could still read the whole thing. This is partial encryption. It’s fine if Alice trusts Charlie with the message.
Finally, end to end encryption is like Alice putting the post card in her own envelope before leaving her home handing the envelope to Charlie who hands it to David and then to Bob, and Bob opens the envelope at his home and reads the message. Now only the intended recipient read the message because everyone else only had the impossible to open enveloped message.
In a basic sense: you write a message and send it to your friend. To get the message to your friend you hand the note to someone else, who then hands the note to someone else, who then hands the note to someone else, who eventually hands it to your friend.
in the meantime, every person who carries your note can read the note.
so to prevent everyone who carries the note from understanding the note, you write the note in a code. And only your friend can decode it. So all the people that carry the note may try to read it, but can’t understand it.
When you write the note in code (unlike having someone else do it for you) and your friend does the decoding themselves – that is end to end encryption.
It encrypts the data on the device you send it with, and it remains encrypted until it arrives to the device of the person you sent it to Think of it like a security envelope. It stops anyone in the middle of the delivery chain from being able to easily see the contents of the message.
In reality, much like a security envelope, if someone really wants to see your message, there are ways for them to do so, but it requires signifigantly more effort than a standard envelope.
Let’s say I sent you a message
One two three
If it’s encrypted ln your end, anyone who intercepts the message before it gets to you can read One Two Three, encrypting it on your device only means it becomes secure after it’s done all that travelling.
If it’s encrypted End to End
I sent One Two Three, before it transmits from my device it gets encrypted to *@;#&*826%;#892;@;%^@6, that travels over the internet and lands at your phone, once it is safely in your hands, it gets de-encrypted to show Ons Two Three.
Anyone who intercepted the signal would see
*@;#&*826%;#892;@;%^@6 and have no idea what is being sent.
It’s like a secret message. You type “hello” and it’s encrypted to be “t6ug2t”*g’ so If I am able to intercept it in the middle I can’t read it or do anything with it, then when I get it it’s unencrypted to be “hello” just like the using keys to read old messages.
Oh my goodness, think of the five year-olds!
Say you want to pass a note to your friend Bob in class.
Before class, you talk to Bob and you make up a secret code. It’s like as special language that only you and Bob understand. You and Bob know the code, but nobody else knows it, not even your teacher.
After class starts, you can write down, “Q wqdt ftfftmusq fqhhr”, and pass it to Bob. When he opens up the note, he knows it secretly means “I like pepperoni pizza”.
But if your teacher or one of your classmates grabs the note, the can’t read it, because they don’t know the secret code! They can look at it all day, but they will never understand what it really means.
Only you and Bob can understand it, because only you and Bob know the secret code.
You’re in school. You want to pass a note to Jane, but you have to pass it through Jim and John to get to her. Jim and John can read your note before she gets it.
So you seal the note. In a practical sense, Jim and John can’t read the contents of the note because Jane will kick their asses if they do. There, your information was safe from end (you) to end (Jane).
This is a modern school so you’re sending her a text from your phone. Packets are often “unwrapped” and “wrapped” as they go through the Internet. You may have encrypted that text from you to your texting service provider, but it gets unencrypted on the server for handling, then re-encrypted to be sent off to the next server, and then to Jane. Your text is only protected in transit through the Internet, but anyone at those servers can read it.
So End to End is like sealing the note, it stays encrypted until it gets to Jane’s phone.
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