In the face of widespread Internet surveillance, we need a secure and practical means of talking to each other from our phones and computers. For years, privacy and security experts worldwide have called on the general public to adopt strong, open-source cryptography to protect our communications.

Many companies offer “secure messaging” products — but are these systems actually secure? The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s secure messaging scorecard made a list of mobile and Internet messaging services that scored well on privacy and security and the services that scored poorly. Let’s focus primarily on the most popular messengers. 

A giant database of intercepted Snapchat photos and videos has been released by hackers who have been collecting the files for years. Shocked users of the notorious chat forum 4chan are referring to the hack as "The Snappening," noting that this is far bigger than the iCloud hacks that recently targeted celebrities.

Underground photo-trading chat rooms have been filled in recent weeks with hints that something big was coming. Thursday night it finally arrived: A third-party Snapchat client app has been collecting every single photo and video file sent through it for years, giving hackers access to a 13GB library of Snapchats that users thought had been deleted.