Apple vs FBI: Facebook, WhatsApp, Google and Snapchat plan to increase encryption of user data -- report

Ignited by Apple’s fierce battle with the FBI, leading tech companies in Silicon Valley including Google, Facebook and Snapchat are said to be working on increasing their own privacy technology.

According to a Guardian report, although the projects by these companies begun before the Apple vs FBI court case, they signal the industry's support for Apple, who is resisting demands by a US federal magistrate judge and the Justice Department to decrypt the iPhone of one of the two San Bernadino shooters who killed 14 people in December last year.

Apple CEO Tim Cook published an open letter on the company’s website in February, saying the unprecedented step to decrypt the phone would effectively build a "backdoor to the iPhone" and open the floodgates to hackers. Cook argued that this would threaten the security of Apple customers, and "undermine decades of security advancements".

RELATED - Apple CEO Tim Cook: The government is asking us to hack our own users

While the Apple Vs FBI battle is still ongoing, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Google, and WhatsApp -- who have openly supported Apple's stance -- now look set to enhance their own encryption.

WhatsApp is already planning to include its voice calls and group messages for enhanced encryption, and could be set to make the announcement within weeks, The Guardian reports. The Facebook-owned messaging chat service, which boasts around one billion active monthly users, currently already offers encrypted messaging for all Android and iPhone users.

Facebook also has plans to tighten the security of its Messenger service, while Snapchat, another popular messaging service, is working on a more secure messaging system.

Meanwhile, Google is looking for new areas to implement its “End-to-End” project, an email encryption plugin that enables anyone to encrypt their emails, which it first announced in 2014.