Encrypted Text Chat App Secure Replaced By Signal

Text Secure and Red Phone, two popular apps for Android encrypted to chat and make calls, will be replaced by a "new" app, so has Open developer Whisper Systems announced. The new app is called Signal, which already last year for iOS appeared.

By combining the two apps in one single Android app, users can immediately encrypted calls and chat. Signal was already compatible with Secure Text, but the latter is now completely replaced. The coming days Secure Text users will receive a regular update that adds the new name as well as the ability to set up private conversations with other Signal users.

Users of Red Phone will be asked if they want to install Signal. Who Signal has already installed can remove Red Phone, as it no longer as a separate app is maintained. Open Whisper Systems emphasizes that Signal gives users real privacy and they can not listen to users. "Everything in Signal is always end-to-end encrypted and carefully put together to protect your communications." In addition, the code of the free and open source software.

Encrypted SMS With Android App SMSSecure

Announced a new app for Android should make it possible again to send encrypted text messages, now another popular Android app that made ​​this possible is stopped. Recently showed Open Whisper Systems , the developer of Secure Text, know that the support of encrypted SMS / MMS is stopped.

According to the developer will be encrypted SMS / MMS never easy to use as encrypted text messages, because users in encrypted SMS manual should exchange the encryption keys before it can be communicated. "We believe that people should not even know what a" key "is, so this obstacle always felt wrong," said the developers.

Also mentions Open WhisperSysms SMS and MMS a "security disaster", because metadata is continuously leaked. SMS messages pass through the servers of telecom companies. The developers do not want the state-run telecom companies like Saudi Arabia, Iran or China can access the metadata Text Secure users. Finally, the support of SMS / MMS make it more difficult for the developers in order to improve the app.

SMSSecure

On GitHub is a new app called appeared SMSSecure , a fork of Text Secure. It is a spin-off based on the source code of Text Secure and focuses on encrypted SMS messages. To go with the app to work there needs to be an unencrypted backup Text Secure, which can then be imported by SMSSecure. SMSSecure developed by the Frenchman Bastien Le Querrec.

Anti-virus Company G Data Is Encrypted Chat App

The German anti-virus company G Data will in April an application for encrypted instant launch , based on the protocol of Axolotl Text Secure . The app allows users besides conducting individual interviews and group discussions also encrypted exchange pictures and files.

Meanwhile, there would be more than 10 million users that communicate via the Axolotl protocol Text Secure. Through apps that support the protocol, as the app from G Data or Secure Text of Open Whisper Systems can either via SMS or via the messaging app itself communicate safely. The app will appear in a free and paid version.

The free version offers not only encrypted chat and file also backing up their own chat history to the SD card and encrypt the private chat history and lock with a password. The paid version offers a phishing filter URLs in instant messages and filter incoming and outgoing messages and text messages.