Yes, you read that title correctly. I, of all people, am advocating against increased security measures for texting. Before we go any further, I want to be clear that I am 100% in favor of encrypted messaging. Let’s put encryption everywhere we can, and lots of it. Lest we forget, this site uses full-time TLS and there isn’t even sensitive data being passed back and forth. There’s a caveat to my security gusto, however: do it right, or don’t bother.
Heml.is (pronounced without the dot) was announced yesterday as a new messaging platform built from the ground up to be secure and private. Their goal is to develop an app for iOS and Android that uses proven open standards and high-grade private key encryption to keep your conversations totally encrypted and away from prying eyes, while being user-friendly and attractive. They’re obviously striking a nerve with users, because in less than 36 hours they’ve managed to raise nearly 90% their $100,000 funding goal.
I’ve been using Azureus for years as my BitTorrent client, but I’ve been increasingly dissatisfied with its performance. I often had trouble getting downloads to start (even with no proxies or encryption enabled), and it was hogging system resources it didn’t deserve. It’s become more bloated with each new release, and it got to the point that I didn’t even want to use BitTorrent anymore because my client was frustrating me so much.
