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WhatsApp has turned on an encryption system to protect messages sent with the Android version of its app.
The WhatsApp Android application has been downloaded about 500 million times.
It said the data scrambling system should make it much harder to eavesdrop on the messages users exchange.
Tech firms have faced criticism by law enforcement figures who said greater use of encryption made it harder to track criminals and extremists.
Data scramble
The encryption system being applied to WhatsApp is called TextSecure and has been developed by a non-profit group called Open Whisper Systems.
"I do think this is the largest deployment of end-to-end encryption ever,"said TextSecure developer Moxie Marlinspike in an interview with tech news site Wired.
WhatsApp said the encryption system would be turned on by default for its huge number of Android users. In October, Facebook completed a $22bn (£14bn) acquisition of WhatsApp.
Many sites and organisations shy away from adopting these technologies because they can be technically demanding to install and administer, said Peter Eckersley, EFF technology projects director, in a statement.
"By making it easy, fast and free for websites to install encryption for their users, we will all be safer online," he said.
Let's Encrypt has been set up with the help of Mozilla, Cisco, Akamai and others and aims to launch in 2015.
Both moves could anger intelligence and law enforcement agencies, which have criticised tech firms for their greater use of encryption.
Earlier this month, GCHQ boss Robert Hannigan said US tech companies were becoming a "command and control" network for terror groups as more secure communications presented a surveillance challenge.
Cited BBC News

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