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I remember when Wickr first started on iOS, the founder said at the time that she wanted an app her kids could use safely. I never met anyone who used Wickr tho

I remember when Wickr first started on iOS, the founder said at the time that she wanted an app her kids could use safely. I never met anyone who used Wickr though. Pretty good job on their part that it went from a niche app to an Amazon acquisition. Now that it will have a corporate implementation people should remember that corporately administered clients (e.g. Teams) save and record a copy of everything you say and do and AWS Wickr is likely to be no different. As Signal is mentioned in this comment thread, I don't see the hit on Signal about the phone number piece as being a big downside. The app is about privacy not anonymity and a phone number is a pretty unique UID. I never installed Signal to talk to anonymous strangers, everyone on my list is someone I know because of the phone number UID. True, I don't know everyone's phone number but I'm probably also not talking to them often or ever. It's very hard to get people to try a different messenger. People are very wedded to the Facebook corporation (FB, Instagram, Whatsapp). It bothers me when I talk about something and then see ads for it shortly after. Obviously not only is it bot-mined for ad purposes, but rather, I don't believe FB ever deletes the data. They are the administrator and likely keep it forever. This is why I personally think Google is better, they mine it with bots, but unlike FB they don't sell data to third parties. Signal is probably at the current time the last non-corporate messenger that is secure and is easy enough to setup and use (other suggestions like Matrix have a barrier to entry that is too high because it requires both technical knowledge and the ability to find your correspondents). It can't be acquired due to it being a non-profit foundation so it's likely to be around for a long time to come.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
emsy 5y ago
>I never met anyone who used Wickr though. I used Wickr to order Weed once. (Illegal where I live)
- TheNorthman 5y ago
  Yes. In Denmark, Wickr is the chat-app of choice for dealers alongside Snapchat. My non-tor skilled friends use it for that. I don't think anyone uses it for anything else. Why Wickr, I don't know. It's not to protect the buyers because the police does not care about them.
  - Sunspark 5y ago
    The working study group for the International League of Criminals after conducting a comprehensive evaluation of various messengers that resisted compromise by law enforcement agencies settled upon Wickr because it had the necessary components of both privacy and anonymity. In addition, the niche appeal of it made it more likely to be spread by whispered word of mouth in the community.
    - Cullinet 5y ago
      But their bosses, being much older, are still using Skype. See my comment above ...
  - mdp2021 5y ago
    I can grant you other people use Wickr for normal communication - why: for lack of better alternatives
soziawa 5y ago
> Signal is probably at the current time the last non-corporate messenger that is secure and is easy enough to setup and use (other suggestions like Matrix have a barrier to entry that is too high because it requires both technical knowledge and the ability to find your correspondents). It can't be acquired due to it being a non-profit foundation so it's likely to be around for a long time to come. Threema exists does e2ee, does not require a phone number (but in practice it is much easier to use it), is fairly easy to setup and has been around for 9 years now. The only downside compared to Signal is that backups are slightly more cumbersome because the password is required to be 9 characters instead of four digits as in Signal. But I don't trust Intel SGX so that is a win in my book. Since Signal currently seems to live off of the loan from Brian Acton, I wouldn't assume the future to be quite as rosy as you paint it to be. Group video calls and everything Intel SGX must be quite expensive.
Cullinet 5y ago
Skype has a little known feature called private conversations. This uses the Signal protocol and even lets you delete the metadata afterwards. I don't think many people noticed at the time, that BillG took being prosecuted by the government very hard indeed. William H Gates III "Trey"to his oldest friends, is American establishment : daddy was Nixon's attorney and mom sat on the board of IBM. Neither do I remember many people who ostensibly cared a great deal about the Microsoft anti trust case, following the actual litigation when it was happening. I read every word and watched as much as I could of the trial. Gates was a disaster on the witness box but nothing least because the allegations - charges and basis of charges - were so universally preposterous in their formation. The New Old Thing blog basically tells you what Justice should have found out in their discovery process and consequently narrowed the case to something other than a massive spite bomb. Reportedly Gates underwent a nervous breakdown of some serious nature midway through his epic examination on the stand. Microsoft were the last I looked the only major not to have backed away from a agreement to enforce the minimum of legality requirements for LEO access to personal information and accounts and Microsoft was spending close to one billion dollars annually merely to reject ludicrous illicit and unfounded demands for access to accounts. I don't know any other cloud computing company who will let me hold the only hardware key to my infrastructure across their cloud and using the same infrastructure and integrations (Thales, a major French defence contractor is the supplier and the solutions pretty good in my experience). At least I'm not surprised that few hail Microsoft for their efforts - advertising flipping fingers at the most self righteous authority establishment for generations isn't probably the best idea. Here's the pdf description of Skype Private Conversations: https://az705183.vo.msecnd.net/onlinesupportmedia/onlinesupport/media/skype/documents/skype-private-conversation-white-paper.pdf https://az705183.vo.msecnd.net/onlinesupportmedia/onlinesupp...

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

emsy 5y ago

>I never met anyone who used Wickr though. I used Wickr to order Weed once. (Illegal where I live)

TheNorthman 5y ago
Yes. In Denmark, Wickr is the chat-app of choice for dealers alongside Snapchat. My non-tor skilled friends use it for that. I don't think anyone uses it for anything else. Why Wickr, I don't know. It's not to protect the buyers because the police does not care about them.
- Sunspark 5y ago
  The working study group for the International League of Criminals after conducting a comprehensive evaluation of various messengers that resisted compromise by law enforcement agencies settled upon Wickr because it had the necessary components of both privacy and anonymity. In addition, the niche appeal of it made it more likely to be spread by whispered word of mouth in the community.
  - Cullinet 5y ago
    But their bosses, being much older, are still using Skype. See my comment above ...
- mdp2021 5y ago
  I can grant you other people use Wickr for normal communication - why: for lack of better alternatives

soziawa 5y ago

> Signal is probably at the current time the last non-corporate messenger that is secure and is easy enough to setup and use (other suggestions like Matrix have a barrier to entry that is too high because it requires both technical knowledge and the ability to find your correspondents). It can't be acquired due to it being a non-profit foundation so it's likely to be around for a long time to come. Threema exists does e2ee, does not require a phone number (but in practice it is much easier to use it), is fairly easy to setup and has been around for 9 years now. The only downside compared to Signal is that backups are slightly more cumbersome because the password is required to be 9 characters instead of four digits as in Signal. But I don't trust Intel SGX so that is a win in my book. Since Signal currently seems to live off of the loan from Brian Acton, I wouldn't assume the future to be quite as rosy as you paint it to be. Group video calls and everything Intel SGX must be quite expensive.

Cullinet 5y ago

Skype has a little known feature called private conversations. This uses the Signal protocol and even lets you delete the metadata afterwards. I don't think many people noticed at the time, that BillG took being prosecuted by the government very hard indeed. William H Gates III "Trey"to his oldest friends, is American establishment : daddy was Nixon's attorney and mom sat on the board of IBM. Neither do I remember many people who ostensibly cared a great deal about the Microsoft anti trust case, following the actual litigation when it was happening. I read every word and watched as much as I could of the trial. Gates was a disaster on the witness box but nothing least because the allegations - charges and basis of charges - were so universally preposterous in their formation. The New Old Thing blog basically tells you what Justice should have found out in their discovery process and consequently narrowed the case to something other than a massive spite bomb. Reportedly Gates underwent a nervous breakdown of some serious nature midway through his epic examination on the stand. Microsoft were the last I looked the only major not to have backed away from a agreement to enforce the minimum of legality requirements for LEO access to personal information and accounts and Microsoft was spending close to one billion dollars annually merely to reject ludicrous illicit and unfounded demands for access to accounts. I don't know any other cloud computing company who will let me hold the only hardware key to my infrastructure across their cloud and using the same infrastructure and integrations (Thales, a major French defence contractor is the supplier and the solutions pretty good in my experience). At least I'm not surprised that few hail Microsoft for their efforts - advertising flipping fingers at the most self righteous authority establishment for generations isn't probably the best idea. Here's the pdf description of Skype Private Conversations: https://az705183.vo.msecnd.net/onlinesupportmedia/onlinesupport/media/skype/documents/skype-private-conversation-white-paper.pdf https://az705183.vo.msecnd.net/onlinesupportmedia/onlinesupp...