Closing the Gap in Encryption on Mobile

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It’s time to expand encryption on Android and iPhone. With governments around the world engaging in constant attacks on user’s digital rights and access to the internet, removing glaring and potentially dangerous targets off of people’s backs when they use their mobile phones is more important than ever. 

So far we have seen strides for at least keeping messages private on mobile devices with end-to-end encrypted apps like Signal, WhatsApp, and iMessage. Encryption on the web has been widely adopted. We even declared in 2021 that “HTTPS Is Actually Everywhere.” Most web traffic is encrypted and for a website to have a reputable presence with browsers, they have to meet certain requirements that major browsers enforce today. Mechanisms like certificate transparency, Cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) rules, and enforcing HTTPS help prevent malicious activity happening to users every day. 

Yet, mobile has always been a different and ever expanding context. You access the internet on mobile devices through more than just the web browser. Mobile applications have more room to spawn network requests in the app without the user ever knowing where and when a request was sent. There is no “URL bar” to see the network request URL for the user to see and check. In some cases, apps have been known to “roll their own” cryptographic processes outside of non-standard encryption practices.

While there is much to discuss on the privacy issues of TikTok and other social media

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