Sridhar Vembu announces system-wide end-to-end encryption for WhatsApp-rival Arattai, calls it ‘a forced upgrade because…’

Earlier this month, Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu shared a post seeking user feedback on how end-to-end encryption (E2EE) should be applied across Arattai – the company’s WhatsApp rival. He then gave two options – system-wide or giving a user choice to pick individual chats to be in E2EE mode. Now, Vembu has shared a status update on X (formerly Twitter), announcing that the company will be moving forward with system-wide encryption. In the post, he also revealed that the feature will be deployed in the coming days, adding ‘it will be a forced upgrade’.“If all goes well, we plan to deploy in a few days. It will be a forced upgrade on all because it is a drastic change,” Vembu wrote.Status on Arattai: we decided to go with option 2 which is mandatory system wide end to end encryption (starting with one on one messages and groups will follow later). We had to do some redesign around it and we wanted extensive testing because it is a drastic change. It is now being tested by about 6,000 people in the company. We identified some issues and have fixed them. We are doing one more round of testing on a new build that has fixed the issues identified. If all goes well, we plan to deploy in a few days. It will be a forced upgrade on all because it is a drastic change.Meanwhile you can upgrade the app and while it already has the code for mandatory e2e encryption, it won't work until we enable it and we will do it after another round of testing. The app is also faster and sleeker now which you can experience.Thank you for your patience