John McAfee of anti-virus fame, in partnership with Etransfr has announce the release of a free messaging app called Chadder. The new app is available for Windows Phone and Android (the iOS version will be along shortly) and it features encryption that the company claims is so good not even they can see what people are sending.
According to a post on the WinBeta site, “Chadder keeps your information safe by using key server encryption. Any message that is sent via Chadder is encrypted. No one can unlock the message except the person receiving the text, making the conversation private and secure.” (You can read the post here.)
John himself says, “Chadder is a fun and easy to use messaging app that happens to keep your communications private. So private that we can’t see it ourselves.”
Lexi Sprague, Founder of Etransfr goes on to say, “The social media industry is built around the consumer also being the product. Chadder is here to prove that young people want privacy just as much as adults do. The application is simple and straight forward with a lot of power given to the user. At the end of the day it is about giving privacy and control back to the user without scaring them off with complicated log in and messaging processes. The team behind the program Chadder believes there needs to be a balance between usability and privacy!”
Sounds good to me.
I just have to wonder, exactly how many messaging services do we need? Is 15 enough? Is 30 too many? Is there such a thing as too many messaging services?
I used to think that once the cell phone swept the world it would spell the end of pagers (why text someone a message when you could simply call them?) And even though pagers have all but disappeared apparently people still have a need to send short text messages back and forth – maybe because text messages are easier to ignore.
And I suppose that having your messages encrypted is better than not having them encrypted. Of course, judging by the popularity of Twitter, a lot of people actually want to have their messages read by any- and everyone. But I wonder, are there really nefarious characters out there trying to snoop on text messages? Does the NSA really care what teenagers are messaging each other about? I’d be willing to bet that 99.99999% of all text messages contain virtually no important information.
Then again, if terrorists are texting important information back and forth then Chadder might be just what they should be using – or they could just use their own secret codes like in the good old spy days.
