A secure private messaging app from BitTorrent is now available across all major platforms.
BitTorrent has finally released its secure private messaging app, Bleep, across all platforms. The service had been available on Android for the past year, albeit in an Alpha version. As of Tuesday, May 12, Bleep is now out of Alpha and available on Android, iOS and Windows.
The notable addition to the Alpha version of the app is the new “Whisper” feature. Whisper functions like a Snapchat-mode inside Bleep. Users can send messages or photos to any of their contacts as a Whisper, and it will disappear 25 seconds after it is viewed by the recepient.
With Bleep, BitTorrent claims to have solved the challenges of peer-to-peer messaging, including the problem of how to get offline users messages once they come back online. The company likens using Bleep to passing a folded note directly to someone else, hand-to-hand. The service keeps messages and the encryption keys for images stored on a local device, not the cloud. Thus, for messages and metadata, there is no server for hackers to target. Images cannot be leaked because the individual users holds the encryption keys.
“We’ve been listening. Listening to our community’s feedback as well as the dialogue that has been taking place around privacy, data-collection, and the social cost of technology bringing us closer together,” said Bleep product head Farid Fadaie in a blog post. “We’ve decided that one of those costs should not be your identity.”
What will make Bleep especially attractive to the privacy conscious is that it requires absolutely no personal information to sign up. All you need to do to sign up is choose a username. Once that is done, you will be assigned a “Bleep key,” which can be posted on social media and will allow friends to find you on Bleep. If they choose, users have the option to verify their email address and phone numbers with Bleep, so that their contacts will see them once they sign up for Bleep.