Secure Messaging on Blockchain
Mobile messaging platforms are coming under a high level of public scrutiny. The Trump Insurrection of 2021 has raised questions about how and where these alarming events get planned. In a matter of a few days, applications like Parler have become a household name. In part because of its connection to the conversations that led to the events of January 6. Interestingly people have become more conscious of centralized apps like Whatsapp and their invasive privacy policies. In fact, Whatsapp is now walking back its invasive policies for sharing information with Facebook.
Deeper questions remain as to the role of media companies like Twitter and Facebook and their place in monitoring user speech on their platforms. Amazon is also involved in this conversation as they have taken the position that any applications that violate their policies to a certain level can now be booted from their cloud hosting platform.
The fact is, all of these platforms are essentially storefronts. Our price for using these stores is to hand over our data and content. The platforms are centralized which not only gives them control but also it increases their vulnerability to theft and misuse. By using these platforms for messaging and information sharing we give them the ability to confiscate, share, and mine our data at well. Beyond the censorship and hosting considerations, this level of data control is troubling.
Decentralized platforms are clearly superior to our traditional centralized friends in the areas of personal security and data privacy. There is in fact a growing number of secure messaging in the decentralized space. In a recent review, I found at least three apps that I think as being really viable in this space.
There are also many reviews of common secure messaging apps. One review has an entire table and website. Source
Secure messaging is obviously a high area of interest and conversation. In a recent TechRadar Article, Brian Turner makes the case for using secure messaging especially because, in this heavy digital era, marketing companies are hard at work trying to track us online as well as get access to our messages. He suggests that one reason behind the rise of secure messaging apps is because:
These aim to better protect users in an internet world where marketing companies are increasingly trying to not just track users but also read their messages. source
In my research, I found a number of messaging platforms that could fit the bill. One of the questions that I have had as I got more interested in Crypto is why do the Blockchain Crypto Social Media Platform communities use centralized messaging apps like Discord or Telegram or WhatsApp. Why not go all-in on DApps?
Enter Session Messenger
Session logo from getsession.com
One such platform is Session Messenger link. Session is a secure messaging platform that I have been testing over the past few days. As I have learned about Session Messenger, I think that this app would be ideal for our community to use for our communications. Session messenger’s key features are:
- No need for a phone number
- No sharing of metadata and no digital footprint
- Open Source
- Censorship Resistant
I think this is a great app for managing communications while maintaining privacy and security. As a community that sees the importance of blockchain, we should seek out more apps like this.
There are some other Messenger apps that I am looking at but will talk about those later.
I think that we definitely need to get away from apps like Discord. That’s been a pet peeve of mine here that so many people use it primarily for communications. I understand using it for support stuff but we will hopefully move away from it. PeakD has the chat feature right on the front end now which is amazing. It’s not secure but it’s better than what we had.
My eventual goal is to make it possible to use the memo key we get for our accounts to use for chatting securely if we want or the posting key to do regular chats. I like the memo key better because it’s encrypted but that’s my notion!
Great post here! Keep it up!
Congratulations @rasbas! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPIf you come back from your hiatus let me know, hopefully we didn't lose you!
@cmplxty. Nope. I am here. I have just been drawn into work. Putting that down for a bit now.
Hey that's awesome to see man! Glad you came back. Work definitely tends to get the best of us sometimes! One thing that's pretty crazy, hell of a price difference in Bitcoin since you were here last huh? LOL
Look forward to seeing your next post, whenever that may be!