When Google unveiled Allo \u2014 their smart messaging app coming soon to Android and iOS \u2014 one of the more interesting features they revealed was end-to-end encryption. As we later learned, the technology powering Allo\u2019s end-to-end encryption was built upon Signal Protocol, the same open-source protocol from Open Whisper Systems that WhatsApp currently uses.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve known since the announcement that E2E encryption was a feature of Allo\u2019s Incognito mode, but now Ars Technica has confirmed exactly why this is the case. Because Google Assistant is such a huge part of Allo, it simply wouldn\u2019t be possible for Google to listen in on conversations and provide smart suggestions for restaurants, or quick replies.<\/p>\n
This is after Thai Duong, the co-leader on Google\u2019s product security team, made it known in a blog post that he wished Allo\u2019s E2E encryption was enabled by default (outside of Incognito Mode) \u2014 not an option left up to the user. The sentiment was further echoed by Edward Snowden in a Twitter post, advising users to avoid using it for now.<\/p>\n
It didn\u2019t take long for Duong\u2019s higher-uppers to get word and the blog post was promptly revised (several times, actually). Duong did mention that it would be possible for Google to add a default encryption option where Google Assistant would only work when messaged directly, but there\u2019s currently no plans to add such a feature.<\/p>\n
In the end, what it comes down to is whether the user values Google Assistant over the privacy of Incognito Mode. It\u2019d be nice to have both, but for now it\u2019s just one or the other.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Google unveiled Allo \u2014 their smart messaging app coming soon to Android and iOS \u2014 one of the more interesting features they revealed was end-to-end encryption. As we later learned, the technology powering Allo\u2019s end-to-end encryption was built upon Signal Protocol, the same open-source protocol from Open Whisper Systems that WhatsApp currently uses. We\u2019ve … Continue reading Allo doesn’t offer default end-to-end encryption setting because it would disable Google Assistant<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[356,357,358],"class_list":["post-929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-allo","tag-e2e-encryption","tag-google-assistant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":930,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions\/930"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dogoodsoft.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}