KakaoTalk introduces end-to-end encryption for chats following outcry over privacy concerns

Yet another high-profile message app has upped the ante on protecting its user data. KakaoTalk, the flagship app from Korea’s newly-formed Daum Kakao, announced today the introduction of “Secret Chat,” a special type of chatroom that implements end-to-end encryption for for all communications.

The company states that decryption keys for messages in Secret Chat are stored on the users’ actual devices, which prevents outside parties from obtaining the contents of the chatroom. The feature currently only supports one-to-one chats on Android devices, but Daum Kakao says that iOS compatibility and comparable features for group chats are coming soon.

Kakao’s rollout of end-to-end encryption almost certainly comes as a response to an uproar among some of the app’s users over privacy and data protection. Last Autumn, reports surfaced that South Korean president Park Geun-hye would begin taking efforts to curb the spread of rumors on social media. This allegedly led many South Korean users to download Telegram, the Russian chat app that offers end-to-end encryption in a form quite similar to that of Kakao’s new Secret Chat feature. The chart below from App Annie illustrates the surge in downloads Telegram experienced from an unlikely market, where Kakao reigns uncontested in the messaging space.

It seems unlikely that Korea’s Kakao-crazy citizens will jump ship for Telegram en masse, but that app’s spike in downloads seems to have nevertheless sent a signal to Kakao. In addition to end-to-end encryption, the company also pledged to hold chat data on its servers for no more than three days.

Last month, WhatsApp introduced end-to-end encryption for all of its chats. That precedent, set by the most widely-used standalone messaging app of its kind, will likely serve as a standard that similar apps will face pressure to reach.