One of the biggest questions I’ve had regarding Cassava Smartech’s recently launched social payments app Sasai is regarding security. How would our data be managed on the platform? Who would have access to the messages I send on the platform.
During last year’s elections, the ruling party somehow ended up with our contact numbers and sent us pretty invasive messages during their campaigns and most of us were disappointed. Before even considering if I would use Sasai or not, I would need reassurances that a similar thing wouldn’t happen with my chats – an important thing considering Zim politics.
During yesterday’s launch event, Sasai’s Product Head Tapera Mushoriwa put rest to my encryption fears when he shared that Sasai will have End 2 End encryption – meaning outside of you and the person you’re texting, no one will be able to read your conversations (unless they have physical access to your device).
Most chat applications that don’t have E2E encryption fail to gain traction nowadays as that has quickly become an expected feature and having this will probably convince a few users who were on the edge because of security fears to use Sasai.
A shift on the horizon?
This announcement comes at a pretty interesting time when a number of leading countries have been considering ending encryption and also having backdoor access to encrypted chat applications. These countries are weighing the risk and rewards of such a measure and the main reason why they would remove encryption is to do with countering terrorism and child abuse being conducted on these private chat applications.
In countries like China, where WeChat (Sasai’s inspiration) originates, encryption is taboo and the conversations can be accessed by the government.
If you had your way, what would you prefer? Encryption or no encryption at all?
4 comments
Unless you are communicating on a peer to peer level, there is NOTHING like guaranteed end-to-end encryption. So long as there is a middleman, they can switch ON and switch OFF end-to-end encryption as they please.
Very true. Munhu munhu. akangopihwa gwalangwa chete bho. Ask Facebook. kkkkkkk
LOL! can they guarantee that nobody at Econet will be able to intercept or have access to data or messages on people’s phones?
So they said they use end to end encryption…. Did you ask which cypher? What size key? Is it PGP based? How is it implemented? How are the keys generated and stored? Security through obscurity is not security at all.
Do we just take their word for it? Did you? Has this become just an extension of Econet PR?