Fortunately, there are secure alternatives that keep your messages private and don’t collect or sell your personal data. Wickr is among their number. So, what is Wickr and how does it work? Is Wickr safe? How does it compare to other encrypted messaging apps?
What is Wickr and how does it work?
Wickr was developed in 2012 by a team of cybersecurity and online privacy experts based in New York. The app was first released on iOS and then on Android, while the Windows version hit the market in 2014. Wickr is now available on all the aforementioned platforms, as well as Mac and Linux. There are three main editions of Wickr: Wickr Me, Wickr Pro and Wickr Enterprise. Wickr Me was designed with people in mind, but allows for both individual and group messaging (no more than 10 members), one-to-one audio and video calling, and file sharing. Wickr Pro is intended for businesses, so groups can have up to 500 members, and up to 70 users can participate in audio and video calls and share large files. The highly customizable Enterprise edition offers additional features and is best suited for large organizations. The basic version of Wickr is free. Silver, Gold, and Platinum cost $4.99, $9.99, and $25.00 per month per user, respectively.
Wickr Security: How secure and private is this app?
At a glance, Wickr looks, feels, and works pretty much like any other messaging app: it lets users exchange text messages, photos, videos, and files. But scratch below the surface and you’ll find a robust and sophisticated Zero Trust cybersecurity infrastructure, with advanced cryptography and plenty of security features. Wickr is 256-bit end-to-end encrypted and uses multiple layers of encryption to protect users’ data and privacy. Messages, files, audio, and video calls are all encrypted locally—a new, random key is used each time. Only the public key is transmitted to Wickr’s servers, while the private key is stored on the user’s device. In other words, if you send a message through Wickr, no one will be able to read it except the person you’re communicating with (no, not even Wickr has access to your messages). So if a cybercriminal were to target your Wickr account, they would literally need all the time in the world to get in, because it would take them trillions of years to decrypt just one key. Even if you don’t know anything about encryption, Wickr’s protocol sounds bulletproof, but arguably just as important from a security perspective is the fact that all messages sent through the app are ephemeral. they disappear and self-destruct. You can choose when. Most importantly, Wickr’s Secure Shredder destroys them in such a way that they can never be recovered or viewed again. Of course, Wickr also uses common (for a better term) security mechanisms like multi-factor authentication and screenshot detection. Wickr does not collect user data or store communication metadata. It collects some telemetry data, but even that can be turned off in the settings. To use Wickr Basic, you don’t need a phone number or email address. All you need to do is download the app, find a unique username and password and that’s it. Obviously, you won’t be able to recover your account if you lose your password or username, but you can always create a new one. As mentioned above, the other versions of Wickr are paid, so you will need to provide the app with some personal information to use them. But if you choose Silver, Gold or Platinum, make sure you use a secure email service to sign up and maintain your privacy. Transparency makes all the difference when it comes to privacy-focused software, and Wickr excels in this regard. The app is not open source, but its cryptographic code is also available on Github. In addition, Wickr allows third-party audits and sends transparency reports. The reports, dating back to 2013, are available on the app’s official website. Wickr also runs a pretty generous bug bounty program, so if you manage to find any security holes or vulnerabilities in their systems, you could be paid up to $100,000. And then there’s the matter of the user base, or lack thereof. About five million people have downloaded Wickr from Google Play. In comparison, WhatsApp has recorded more than five billion downloads on the same store. Your friends probably haven’t even heard of Wickr, let alone used it, which defeats the purpose of having a messaging app on your phone. However, there is definitely a market for private and secure collaboration platforms.
How does Wickr compare to other encrypted messaging apps?
It wouldn’t make sense to compare Wickr with the mainstream messaging apps as it is obviously more secure and much more private than any of them. But how does Wickr stack up against other secure, encrypted messaging apps? Signal and Telegram have become very popular in recent years, while apps like Wire and Speek are starting to make their mark. But what Signal and Telegram have and Wickr don’t, are large user bases. Wire, on the other hand, is business-oriented. As for Speek, it routes all traffic through the Tor network, which provides an extra layer of security.
Wickr: Private messaging for businesses and individuals
Wickr has yet to grow its user base to the point where everyday people use it to communicate with each other, but even if it never matches the popularity of WhatsApp and similar services, it could become indispensable as a secure collaboration platform for businesses and large organizations. If you’re looking for an encrypted messaging app to talk to friends and family, there are a number of secure and private alternatives to consider.
