Republicans and Democrats Reportedly Using Self-Destructing Message Apps to Avoid Leaks
February 10th, 2017Via: The Verge:
Trump administration members and other Republicans are using the encrypted, self-destructing messaging app Confide to keep conversations private in the wake of hacks and leaks, according to Jonathan Swan and David McCabe at Axios. Axios writes that “numerous senior GOP operatives and several members of the Trump administration” have downloaded Confide, which automatically wipes messages after they’re read.
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Encrypted message apps like Signal, Telegram, and WhatsApp apparently spiked in popularity after Trump’s election, and the Clinton campaign reportedly adopted Signal after the DNC hack was discovered.
Trump encouraged the general populace to write stuff out by hand and use personal couriers if you truly want to keep it away from prying eyes. I assume everything I put into a cellphone or computer is backdoored through the OS (much like most computers, including certain distributions of Linux).
I guess this is “better” than Podesta using a gmail account with the password: P@assword.
VPN and Proxies are somewhat useful in keeping a portion of your info away from 3rd parties (which include health + other insurance companies). You do have the advantage of storing your possible logs on foreign servers (which in court have proven more difficult to reach), and encryption.
http://europe.newsweek.com/does-us-warrant-apply-data-stored-foreign-server-332236?rm=eu
“The adage goes, “If you’re not paying for a service, you’re the product, not the customer,””
I don’t understand how anyone thinks their messages can be secure when the OSes on which the apps are running are known surveillance platforms. What difference does end to end encryption make if keystrokes and audio can be captured? Windows 10 is particularly ridiculous.
All of that said, Wickr does have a $100K bug bounty, Linux versions and endorsement from EFF. I’m not endorsing Wickr, but if I was forced to pick one, that’s probably the one I’d pick.
Like you say, it’s better than plain text email, but my guess is that the main point of these apps is a social engineering hack to convince people that their traffic is actually secure.
Plain text email has never been secure. Now, even non technical users know that. So the easy-to-use apps are multiplying. Be careful!