SEE ALSO: Some Koreans moving away from KakaoTalk for fear of government monitoring and lack of privacy
Back in September, President Park Geun Hye claimed that there were many groundless online accusations made against her, particularly among Sewol Ferry activists. Prosecutors stated that they would step up real-time monitoring of SNS conversations in order to stop the spread of false information. This alarmed the public, and there was further unease when representative Jung Jin Woo of the Labor Party revealed that his KakaoTalk conversations with 3,000 acquaintances, all involved in Sewol Ferry protests, were examined by the government.
KakaoTalk had stated earlier that it could not offer government real-time monitoring of its conversations in an attempt to debunk speculation against the app. Nevertheless, a lot of Koreans made the switch from KakaoTalk to German-based privacy-focused app Telegram, which is a popular messenger service among Russians who wish to escape the strict censorship of the Russian government.
On October 8, KakaoTalk admitted that the government sent 147 requests with warrants to inspect conversations among certain KakaoTalk users. In order to dispel user fear of further government surveillance, KakaoTalk has promised to introduce a "privacy mode" by the end of the year.
The new "privacy mode" will allow users to have more privacy with end-to-end encrypted conversations. Authorities will not be able to inspect any of these secret conversations on the server, even with a warrant. KakaoTalk has also announced that conversations will only be stored on the server for a maximum of 3 days instead of 7 in further hopes to set their current users at ease.
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