Securing communications

The ability to communicate online is a given these days; We all do it in various ways, to a greater or lesser degree, and in doing so we divulge a little or a lot of information about ourselves and others...All of which is out there in cyberspace somewhere...Ripe for the plucking.

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I wrote a post about the fact I'd been investigating messaging options with my brother which you can read here and since writing that post have been trialling the service mentioned in it plus one more which we located a day or so ago. It's about the latter I write today however first.

The first, Briar, we found to be very secure however quite limiting as it only sent text. It also seemed to churn through battery power quite greedily. On the flip-side it is incredibly secure and private. We are still using it however have added a second option into the experiment, one called Threema.

So far Threema seems to be a great improvement on Briar. It's advert-free and doesn't rely on investors which is good from a longevity perspective. It provides anonymity though there being no need to use your mobile number or email and generates very little date on servers; Groups and contacts are managed on each users' device and messages are immediately deleted after delivery mitigating the meta-data capturing issue. End-to-end encryption protects all communications including messages, files voice calls and group chats...It's pretty secure.

The Swiss-based company have put together a nice looking app too. Unlike Briar it is more traditional in design and of course, provides the ability to send files, voice, video and photos also. I really like the fact it doesn't necessarily need a mobile number or email address which gives users the ability to be very anonymous. You and I could connect on it quite comfortably without exchanging phone numbers for instance.

On the downside, at least for some, is that the app doesn't come for free. I paid $4.99AUD on the Playstore for the app, although it has a desktop site one can access as use also. I wasn't too fussed over the five bucks though.

I have to say that at this stage it looks like a winner for my brother and I although we are going to reserve our opinion until we have tested it properly over a few weeks. We understand that it may not get picked up by everyone but for our family it could provide a safe and secure location for our communications, for those who chose to pay for it anyway.

I'd really value your opinion, especially if you have greater knowledge about these things than I do. If you'd like to follow the link to Threema and take a look I would be keen to hear your opinion on it. I don't expect you to buy it of course, but I'd value your informed opinion on what you see on their website.

Feel free to help out with my experiment.

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