Slack Doesn't Have End-to-End Encryption Because Your Boss Doesn't Want It

Business communications service Slack, which has more than three million paying customers, offers a bouquet of features that has made it popular (so popular that is worth as much as $9 billion), but it lacks a crucial feature that some of its rivals don't: end-to-end encryption. It's a feature that numerous users have asked Slack to add to the service. Citing a former employee of Slack and the company's chief information security officer, news outlet Motherboard reported Tuesday that the rationale behind not including end-to-end encryption is very simple: bosses around the world don't want it. From the report: Work communication service Slack has decided against the idea of having end-to-end encryption due to the priorities of its paying customers (rather than those who use a free version of the service.) Slack is not a traditional messaging program -- it's designed for businesses and workplaces that may want or need to read employee messages -- but the decision still highlights why some platforms may not want to jump into end-to-end encryption. End-to-end is increasingly popular as it can protect communications against from interception and surveillance. 'It wasn't a priority for exec [executives], because it wasn't something paying customers cared about,' a former Slack employee told Motherboard earlier this year.

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