Privatext allows you to send texts and photos that disappear after a set amount of time.
Ever since the great Paris Hilton T-Mobile
Sidekick debacle in 2005, where her naughty
bytes were exposed to the world, celebrities and
civilians alike flew into a state of mobile hackerphobia.
While security remains a concern in
today’s voyeuristic, information-obsessed world,
companies who promise protection against data
leaks have built an industry. One that feeds off the
paranoia of those with too little time to dance with
the latest security techniques.
Mission Impossible-like features to mobile
texting and image sharing. Users can send
encrypted messages that are decoded by the
recipient and, after the sender’s determined
amount of time, deleted from both sides.
Celebrities like Brad Delson of Linkin Park and
Adam Richman from the Travel Channel’s Man vs.
Food have already adopted the free app
(application software) and, fingers crossed, it
hopes to become the standard of the entertainment
industry.
“Before we launched Privatext, our
development team spent weeks testing our
application to make sure that no messages were
saved anywhere after they were deleted,” said
Privatext CEO (Chief Executive Officer) and
Founder Justin Schwartz. “When our team was
finished, we hired the brilliant team over at
Decipher Forensics just to make a hundred percent
certain we covered all of our bases. After they
gave us a clean bill of health, we launched.”
The sign-up process after downloading the
app is pretty quick: The user inputs an email
address and cell phone number. The app then
generates a PIN (Personal Identification Number)
like the ones used in Blackberry’s messaging
system. To send a message, the user adds a contact
using the other person’s PIN and waits for the
recipient to approve the invitation.
From there, it’s a typical chat exchange except
that after anywhere from 30 seconds to 24 hours,
the messages vanish. Expiration can be adjusted
on the fly so if one message is more sensitive than
another, expiration can be tailored accordingly.
Privatext’s current interface is clean and easy to
navigate, and while the color scheme leaves a bit to
be desired, all in all, the app does what’s promised.
But with reports of the NSA (National
Security Agency) monitoring the most random
forms of apps and services like World of Warcraft
and more recently Angry Birds, it wouldn’t be too
far-off to imagine the same thing happening if
Privatext becomes the powerhouse it’s banking on.
“Privatext is technology’s equivalent of
having a face-to-face conversation,” Schwartz
says. “If the NSA, or anyone, believes that all
Privatexts should be monitored, it would be the
same as saying that every conversation on the
planet should be recorded in some form, and I
don’t see that happening any time soon.”
Next week, Privatext plans to launch an
updated version of the app that includes a sexier
graphic redesign and navigation improvements.
The company also offers their technology on an
enterprise level to corporate clients and hospitals
for a fee to offset giving it away to consumers. Best
of all, Privatext promises not to sell user
information to third parties, so there’s no need to
worry about unknowingly signing up to the
Nigerian scam of the week club.
Privatext is now available for iOS and Android
via iTunes and Google Play.
Adapted from: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2014/02/10/ozy-privatext-app/5369187/
A melhor tradução de “The sign-up process after downloading the app is pretty quick” (linhas 32 e 33) é
