![]() The reports, dating back to 2013, are available on the app's official website. On top of that, Wickr allows third-party audits and sends out transparency reports. The app is not open source, but its crypto code is available on Github too. Transparency makes all the difference when it comes to privacy-focused software, and Wickr excels in this regard. But if you do opt for Silver, Gold, or Platinum, make sure you use a secure email service to sign up and maintain your privacy. Obviously, you will not be able to recover your account if you lose your password or username, but you can always create a new one.Īs mentioned above, the other versions of Wickr are paid-for, so you will need to provide the app with some personal information to use them. All you need to do is download the app, come up with a unique username and password, and that's it. To use the Basic version of Wickr, you don't need a phone number or an email address. It does collect some telemetry data, but even this can be disabled in the settings. Wickr does not collect user data or store communication metadata. Of course, Wickr also utilizes ordinary (for want of a better term) security mechanisms, such as multi-factor authentication and screenshot detection. More importantly, Wickr's Secure Shredder destroys them in such a way that they can never be recovered or viewed again. But even if every person that has downloaded the app is an active user, the userbase is really small compared to apps like WhatsApp that boast about hundreds of millions of active users. So, if a cybercriminal were to target your Wickr account, they would need to have literally all the time in the world to break in, because it would take them trillions of years to decrypt just one key.Įven if you know nothing about encryption, Wickr's protocol sounds bulletproof, but arguably just as crucial in terms of security is the fact that all messages sent via the app are ephemeral they disappear and self-destruct. Wickr claims that one million users have downloaded the app with no information on how many active users they have. In other words, if you send a message via Wickr, no one will be able to read it, except the person you are communicating with (no, not even Wickr has access to your messages). Only the public key is transmitted to Wickr's servers, while the private key is stored on the user's device. Originally designed for government agencies, the company has offerings. Messages, files, audio, and video calls are all encrypted locally-a new, random key is used each time. Wickr is a US-based instant messaging app that was bought by Amazon Web Services in 2021. Wickr is 256-bit end-to-end encrypted, and uses multiple layers of encryption to protect user data and privacy.
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