How to Encrypt All of the Things

Cryptography was oncethe realm of academics, intelligence services, and a few cypherpunk hobbyists who sought to break the monopoly on that science of secrecy. Today, the cypherpunks have won: Encryption is everywhere. It’s easier to use than ever before. And no amount of handwringing over its surveillance-flouting powers from an FBI director or attorney general has been able to change that.

Thanks in part to drop-dead simple, increasingly widespread encryption apps like Signal, anyone with a vested interest in keeping their communications away from prying eyes has no shortage of options.

In fact, secure communications are not only attainable but perhaps even the new default, says Matthew Mitchell, the founder of security training organization Crypto Party Harlem and an adviser to the Open Technology Fund. “Security is here to stay. It’s now expected that a product just encrypts without you having to do anything,” Mitchell says. He describes every unencrypted internet-connected app or web tool as a window without curtains. “Now people are learning there are curtains.”

Still, effective encryption doesn’t always just happen, especially once you move beyond basic messaging. Here’s how to keep snoopers out of every facet of your digital life, whether it’s video chat or your PC’s hard drive.

Signal, the smartphone and now-desktop encryption app, has become the darling of the privacy community, for good reason. It’s as easy to use as the default messaging app on your phone; it’s been open source from the start, and carefully audited and probed by security researchers; and it has received glowing recommendations from Edward Snowden, academic cryptographers, and beyond. Its cryptographic protocol also underpins the encryption offered by WhatsApp and Facebook‘s Secret Conversations. (Those two services don’t, however, offer Signal’s assurance that it doesn’t log the metadata of who is talking to whom.) The most important note, for encrypted chat newbies: Remember that the person with whom you’re messaging has to be on the same service. Signal to Signal provides rock-solid end-to-end encryption; Signal to iMessage, or even to WhatsApp, won’t.

There are plenty of other ways to communicate securely. Unlike Signal, messaging apps like Wire, Threema, and Wickr allow you to sign up without tying your account to a phone number, a significant feature for those seeking some level of anonymity in addition to security. And iMessage has also quietly offered end-to-end encryption for years, although without the assurances Signal offers about no logging of metadata, or that messages aren’t being intercepted by spoofed contacts. (Signal is designed to warn you when the unique key of your contact changes, so that he or she can’t easily be impersonated on the network.)

On the desktop rather than the phone, a few emerging tools offer advantages over Signal too: Keybase, Semaphore, Wire, and Wickr Pro offer some approximation of an encrypted version of the collaboration software Slack, with more collaboration and team-focused features than Signal offers.