After a sprawling hacking campaign exposed the communications of an unknown number of Americans, U.S. cybersecurity officials are advising people to use encryption in their communications.

To safeguard against the risks highlighted by the campaign, which originated in China, federal cybersecurity authorities released an extensive list of security recommendations for U.S. telecom companies -- such as Verizon and AT&T -- that were targeted. The advice includes one tip we can all put into practice with our phones: "Ensure that traffic is end-to-end encrypted to the maximum extent possible."

End-to-end encryption, also known as E2EE, means that messages are scrambled so that only the sender and recipient can see them. If anyone else intercepts the message, all they will see is a garble that can't be unscrambled without the key.

Law enforcement officials had until now resisted this type of encryption because it means the technology companies themselves won't be able to look at the messages, nor respond to law enforcement requests to turn the data over.