Short answer: no, Oralingo is not end-to-end encrypted. Some older articles about Oralingo said it was. That was wrong, and we have corrected our website. This post explains what actually happens to a message you send, because you should know that before you trust an app with your conversations.
What end-to-end encryption means
With end-to-end encryption, a message is locked on your phone and can only be unlocked on the other person's phone. Nobody in between, including the company running the service, can read it. WhatsApp and Signal work this way.
Why a translating messenger can't do that
To translate your message, something has to read it. In Oralingo that happens on our servers, which run on Microsoft Azure: your message goes up, it is translated into the other person's language, and the translation goes down to them. The same is true when we read a message aloud in a natural-sounding voice, or turn speech on a call into translated captions.
There is a second reason. Text messages are checked automatically for abusive content before they are delivered. That protection only works if the server can see the text.
So end-to-end encryption and automatic translation of every message are, today, a choice between two things. We chose translation, and we would rather say so plainly than blur it.
What we do to protect your messages
- Encrypted in transit. Messages travel between your phone and our servers over an encrypted connection.
- Encrypted when stored. Messages and their translations are encrypted in our database with AES-256. The keys are kept in Microsoft Azure Key Vault, separate from the data.
- Encrypted on your phone. The message cache on your phone is encrypted too, with a key held in the iPhone Keychain or the Android KeyStore.
- Deleting a chat deletes it. When you delete a chat, its messages are removed from our servers. The one exception is a chat that has been reported for abuse: it is kept until the report has been reviewed.
- No strangers. Nobody can message you until you have accepted the connection.
- We don't sell your data.
When you should use something else
If the people you talk to share your language, or you only need the odd message translated, an end-to-end encrypted messenger is the better choice. WhatsApp can now translate individual messages on your phone without breaking its encryption. If your conversations are the kind that must never be readable by anyone but the two of you, use Signal or WhatsApp and translate by hand.
Oralingo is for the conversations where language is the barrier in every single message: partners who don't share a language, families across generations, expats and their neighbors. There, not having to translate anything yourself is the point.
Questions
If something here is unclear, or you want to know more about how we handle your data, write to support@oralingo.app. More answers are in the FAQ, and there is an honest comparison with WhatsApp and Telegram.
