This privacy app may work for White House aides, but it's still a mystery
Endorsements are a solid way to vault a product into a new stratosphere, and there are perhaps few better endorsements than the White House.
Signal and WhatsApp are the current darlings for anyone interested in sending secure texts on their phone, but an app called Confide got a huge — uh — signal boost on Monday when The Washington Post reported that staffers at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue were using it because they are afraid of being "accused of talking to the media."
But how exactly does Confide work, and how secure is it?
SEE ALSO: Trump's cyber advisor didn't know about Signal
Confide's website stakes the app's appeal on three pillars. First, it claims "military-grade" encryption. Second, the texts disappear as soon as they're read. Third, your messages can't be screenshotted. This all fits with the app's motto of sorts, which is that they believe texts should be as private as "the spoken word."
"If the reports that U.S. political operatives are using Confide are accurate, we think it makes sense, regardless of which side of the aisle they're on," Jon Brod, co-founder and president of Confide, said via email. "Confide is particularly useful for people who communicate sensitive information as a matter of course."
That may well be true. Confide may have "military grade" end-to-end encryption. The feature that erases messages on sight may make it the best privacy-conscious chat app there is. But it's a claim that's hard to make or refute for anyone outside the company, because Confide's source code isn't publicly available. And several experts have questioned how secured it really is.
"Signal and WhatsApp are two apps that are well-respected among the security community," said David Wagner, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. "They've gotten quite a bit of scrutiny and analysis, and on the whole they seem to be pretty good, pretty secure. Confide looks like an unknown."
Wagner waved off concerns others have raised about Confide's compliance with government encrypted standards, saying such things are more a "compliance" ordeal than a security concern. But without being able to dig into the source code, he's a little worried Confide could be too much like Snapchat.
Snaps disappear a few seconds after a user sees them, but Snap Inc. endured a string of bad press after users learned their messages weren't actually deleted. And if they're not deleted, that means they can be recovered, even if not by your average internet sleuth.
Confide may be nothing like Snapchat in this regard, but without the source code, Wagner says it's not possible to tell. And hey, more than a few past stories have called Confide the "Snapchat for business."
For now, White House staff will probably keep using it. And leaks to the media will probably keep coming.
