“Can the Government Read My Text Messages?”

You should be able to message your family and friends without fear that law enforcement is reading everything you send. Privacy is a human right, and that’s why we break down the ways you can protect your ability to have a private conversation....

Strong End-to-End Encryption Comes to Discord Calls

We’re happy to see that Discord will soon start offering a form of end-to-end encryption dubbed “DAVE” for its voice and video chats. This puts some of Discord’s audio and video offerings in line with Zoom, and separates it from tools like Slack...

The French Detention: Why We're Watching the Telegram Situation Closely

EFF is closely monitoring the situation in France in which Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov was charged with having committed criminal offenses, most of them seemingly related to the operation of Telegram. This situation has the potential to pose a...

Now The EU Council Should Finally Understand: No One Wants “Chat Control”

The EU Council has now passed a 4th term without passing its controversial message-scanning proposal. The just-concluded Belgian Presidency failed to broker a deal that would push forward this regulation, which has now been debated in the EU for...

European Court of Human Rights Confirms: Weakening Encryption Violates Fundamental Rights

In a milestone judgment - Podchasov v. Russia - the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has ruled that weakening of encryption can lead to general and indiscriminate surveillance of the communications of all users and violates the human right...

EFF Statement on Nevada's Attack on End-to-End Encryption

EFF learned last week that the state of Nevada is seeking an emergency order prohibiting Meta from rolling out end-to-end encryption in Facebook Messenger for all users in the state under the age of 18. The motion for a temporary restraining order...

What Apple's Promise to Support RCS Means for Text Messaging

You may have heard recently that Apple is planning to implement Rich Communication Services (RCS) on iPhones, once again igniting the green versus blue bubble debate. RCS will thankfully bring a number of long-missing features to those green...

Protecting Encryption And Privacy In The US: 2023 Year in Review

EFF believes you have the right to have a private conversation–in the physical world, and in the digital world. The best technology to protect that right is end-to-end encryption. Governments around the world are working hard to monitor online...

Meta Announces End-to-End Encryption by Default in Messenger

Yesterday Meta announced that they have begun rolling out default end-to-end encryption for one-to-one messages and voice calls on Messenger and Facebook. While there remain some privacy concerns around backups and metadata, we applaud this...

Without Interoperability, Apple Customers Will Never Be Secure

Every internet user should have the ability to privately communicate with the people that matter to them, in a secure fashion, using the tools and protocols of their choosing.Apple’s iMessage offers end-to-end encrypted messaging for its...

This Month, The EU Parliament Can Take Action To Stop The Attack On Encryption

A key European parliamentary committee has taken an important step to defend user privacy, including end-to-end encryption. The Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) has politically agreed on much-needed amendments to a...

8 Signs You Are Smarter Than You Think

Intelligence has many faces. It rarely has much to do with a person's level of education; on the contrary. Especially people who have had to acquire their knowledge themselves throughout their lives remain inquisitive and at some point become keen o…

EFF, ACLU and 59 Other Organizations Demand Congress Protect Digital Privacy and Free Speech

Earlier this week, EFF joined the ACLU and 59 partner organizations to send a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer urging the Senate to reject the STOP CSAM Act. This bill threatens encrypted communications and free speech online, and...

Today The UK Parliament Undermined The Privacy, Security, And Freedom Of All Internet Users 

The U.K. Parliament has passed the Online Safety Bill (OSB), which says it will make the U.K. “the safest place” in the world to be online. In reality, the OSB will lead to a much more censored, locked-down internet for British users. The bill...

The UK Government Knows How Extreme The Online Safety Bill Is

The U.K.’s Online Safety Bill (OSB) has passed a critical final stage in the House of Lords, and envisions a potentially vast scheme to surveil internet users. The bill would empower the U.K. government, in certain situations, to demand that...

UK Online Safety Bill Will Mandate Dangerous Age Verification for Much of the Web

This blog post was co-written by Dr. Monica Horten of Open Rights Group.Under new age verification rules in the UK’s massive Online Safety Bill, all internet platforms with UK users will have to stop minors from accessing ‘harmful’ content, as...

UK Government Apparently Hoping It Can Regulate End-To-End Encryption Out Of Existence

Politicians -- those motivated by the notion of "doing something" -- want to end encryption. They don't want this to affect their communications and data security. But they don't see the harm in stripping these protections from the...