For better or worse, between WhatsApp now in the bosom of Facebook, Telegram, whose independence has yet to be proven against the Russian government, or Signal, which has received funding from the American government since 2015, Messaging is literally keeping your communications private in 2020. Since all three of these market-leading applications are based on a centralized architecture with proxy servers, end-to-end encryption is really no longer a guarantee.
Therefore, a government actor or even hackers can potentially openly access conversations as soon as they manage to gain access to the servers of these applications. Olvid, a French startup, is doing well in this area. Olvid comes in the form of an Android and iOS app with more or less the same functionality as WhatsApp and other competitors.
Olvid, agentless messaging
You can use the app to communicate with friends and professionals, create discussion groups, forward photos, videos and other files. The difference is mainly in encryption and security. Olvid does indeed offer strong encryption, but unlike WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal, each conversation establishes a direct connection with the recipient(s) without going through a central server.
Therefore, even if Olvid’s servers (which they still own to manage application infrastructure or user accounts) are hacked, the content of private conversations cannot be disclosed in any way. In fact, the only way to access these conversations is to do so via the recipient’s or sender’s smartphone. Olvid’s encryption is based on a “cryptographic engine” that emerged after five years of research.
When you invite someone to join the chat, you can do so by presenting them a QR code or sending them a one-time link via SMS or other sharing method. The designers of the application “Olvid is free at first”without saying if this freebie is going to end soon.
In an interview with Challenges, the executives of this secure messaging service made in France, “Application security is based on our state-of-the-art cryptography that mathematically proves the integrity, privacy and anonymity of user communications”. and add that this security can be particularly useful “for a manager traveling during crisis management or to a country like Russia or China”.
You can now test the Olvid app by downloading it from the Play Store:
Download Olvid from Google Play Store
Source : Difficulties
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