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'For RedPhone, our user base is still manageable enough (for now) to use the bloom filter technique. Meanwhile, the finite possible mobile numbers meant hashes of them could be easily guessed.

'Encrypted bloom filters' could allow that process to happen privately on the end-user's device, but the file would be impractically large for TextSecure's user base of 10 million, according to Marlinspike. 'The simplest way to calculate the intersection of registered users and device contacts is to upload all the contacts in the address book to the service, index them, reverse index them, send the client the intersection, and subsequently notify the client when any of those contacts later register,' Marlinspike noted in a recent post on the find friend conundrum.

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OWS' chief engineer Moxie Marlinspike recent worked with the CyanogenMod team to bring it to the popular custom ROM, which means that Android and soon iOS users can connect securely with friends running it.Īs a social app, Text Secure faces the usual privacy challenges in building a social network through find friend features.

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The app is not available for Windows but it's coming soon to iOS. TextSecure is a normal SMS/MMS app when communicating with non-TextSecure users, but sends messages encrypted over a data network when both are TextSecure users. OWS compares it to an encrypted version of Apple's iMessage. Users can create private chat groups with the same end to end encryption previously offered with TextSecure SMS chats. Until recently, Text Secure was purely for encrypted SMS and MMS, but OWC recently introduced new features that bring it up to par with IM apps that communicate over data networks. Text Secure by Open Whisper Systems (OWS) is the messaging sibling of OWS' encrypted voice app RedPhone, and offers encrypted SMS, MMS and instant messaging. The company plans on monetising the app by charging its top three percent of users for premium features.

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Wickr is available free for iOS and Android.

How it's sent and stored can impact user privacy.Īccording to Wickr: 'if you use Find Friends, the Wickr App will send a disguised representation of your contacts phone number and email address to our servers, at which point our server will check that representation against our database to see whether that contact has an associated Wickr ID.' It's usually done by sucking up a device's contact list to the company's servers where it can be cross-referenced against other users on the service. One of the challenges around privacy for social apps is that 'find friends' features can often undermine it. Unlike many social apps, Wickr claims in its privacy policy that it doesn't collect any user location data and besides lawful government requests, the only data it shares with a third party is the user's phone number with the company which sends confirmation SMS for Wickr's ID Connect, the feature that allows users to be found by their friends.

Wickr, which just landed $9m in funding, claims to uses military grade encryption, perfect forward secrecy and, for self-destructing messages, forensic shredding. Wickr is often compared to Snapchat, but has made security and privacy its key feature. Here ZDNet takes a look at 10 apps for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, or BlackBerry that can boost mobile privacy. Ongoing revelations about government agencies snooping on citizens' electronic communications has led to more privacy-awareness among mobile users.