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in Project HOPE4 years ago

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.

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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

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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:

  1. No need for a phone number
  2. No sharing of metadata and no digital footprint
  3. Open Source
  4. 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.

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