In the recent years we have started to see more developers of messaging apps introduce more security features, like WhatsApp who has started to encrypt user data by default. While encryption is no doubt a welcome feature, there are some who aren’t too pleased about it, but it looks like nothing is going to stop the encryption train.
Popular messaging app LINE has recently pushed out an update to their mobile app. This update will introduce a new feature called Letter Sealing, which is basically end-to-end encryption. What this means is that your data and messages sent and received will be protected from delivery to receiving, so even if someone were to intercept the data mid-way, they won’t be able to read it.
According to LINE, this applies to their mobile apps and their desktop apps for Windows and OS X, thus effectively giving end-to-end encryption cross-platforms, which the company claims they are the first messaging app to offer up such features. We suppose to be fair there aren’t that many desktop versions of messaging apps at the moment, save for KakaoTalk and Skype. WhatsApp and Hangouts currently exist as web apps.
That being said if you’d like to enable the feature, you will need to update your app to version 5.3.0 or higher. You will then need to go to “More > Settings > Chats & Voice Calls > Letting Sealing” to turn it on since it isn’t enabled by default. We should note that turning it on means that message previews in your notifications will be disabled as well.