Bahk Eun-ji has been with The Korea Times since 2012, building a career across multiple desks. She began at the Business Desk, where she conducted in-depth interviews with key figures in Korea's corporate world. Later, she moved to the Politics & City Desk, focusing on education policy and social affairs. She later served as team leader of the digital content team, leading curation efforts on the newspaper’s homepage and reshaping print stories for social media audiences to enhance digital reach. Now back on the Politics Desk, she covers the National Assembly and the Ministry of National Defense, with a renewed focus on political developments.
Mobile messengers introduce more privacy options
By Bahk Eun-ji
By Bahk Eun-ji
Domestic messenger app operators are competing to offer safer privacy modes in a bid to calm users’ security concerns.
Their move to beef up their security came after they went through “cyberexile” among Korean users to foreign mobile messengers such as Telegram.
On Tuesday, Internet service provider SK Communications launched “Secret Chat” mode on its mobile messenger Nate.
SK says the company adopted end-to-end encryption, which is a digital communications paradigm of uninterrupted protection of data traveling between parties.
Only the recipient can read the data because the decryption key is stored in the user’s device. This also makes it impossible for investigators to read messages.
“Unlike other domestic mobile messengers with the feature, users can use the secret mode in the PC version of the messenger,” an SK official said in a statement.
An increasing number of Internet users are concerned about privacy when using mobile messengers. The country’s prosecution threatened to step up real-time monitoring of social media a few months ago, which is fueling privacy concerns and encouraging companies to offer more privacy options.
SK’s adoption of new security features is the latest in a series of steps by messenger app operators to bolster protection of user privacy.
In October, Daum Kakao launched its privacy mode, in which messages are encrypted and even deleted from the server as soon as they are read.
“Under the privacy mode, investigators won’t be able to access the messages even with warrants,” a Daum Kakao spokeswoman said.
Daum Kakao is not the only domestic messenger adopting the privacy mode.
The Daum Kakao spokeswoman said the new privacy mode in Kakao Talk gave users options to protect their privacy.
“The new feature keeps information from authorities trying to monitor them, but more importantly, our users can choose between security mode and general mode,” the spokeswoman said.
Experts said users were increasingly worried about security and privacy protection not just to protect their information from the authorities but also from opportunistic online marketers.
“Now, a growing number of users require protection. It is even connected to which messenger they choose,” said Kim Sung-joo, a professor at the Graduate School of Information Security Protection at Korea University.
Kim said mobile messenger providers should make security a top priority.