As Facebook's WhatsApp deal continues to make news, what should consumers know about messaging services and privacy? Privacy expert Nico Sell, the co-founder of a competing messaging service Wickr, discusses privacy on digits. Photo: Getty Images.

Privacy and Messaging Apps: What Should You Know?

IT’S been called Snapchat for grown ups and it may just be the tool that could bring down the Prime Minister.

Staying true to his portfolio, Malcolm Turnbull, the Communications Minister once credited for “practically inventing the internet”, has enlisted the services of a selfdestructing messaging app you might not have even heard of, The Australian reports.

Mr Turnbull, Scott Morrison, and other politicians implicated in the February leadership-spill-that-wasn’t, are reportedly using Wickr — a secret agent-style messaging app that sells itself on a guarantee of metadata-free messages and anonymity.

The app, described by one of its founders as designed for “very high tension situations, where if information gets out ahead of time, people could get hurt”, has reportedly been used by Mr Turnbull, Mr Morrison, and other MPs such as Alex Hawke to discuss the Liberals’ leadership crisis and “movement in numbers” around support for Tony Abbott.

HOW IT WORKS

“Don’t worry about your conversations being tracked and monitored,” Wickr’s app store description boasts.

“Millions of Top-Secret Messages are served each day in almost every country in the world.”

Launched by a group of security experts in 2012, the Wickr app uses “cryptographic hashing” to “forensically wipe” messages after they expire.

Enabling encrypted text messages, photos and videos to be sent anonymously, the app allows messages to selfdestruct within a time set by the sender, and strips messages of metadata, leaving no traceable evidence. Messages are deleted from Wickr’s server on delivery.

“When you decrypt a message the self destruct time begins counting down. Once the time runs out the message will automatically delete itself,” it promises.

Messages sent through Wickr can only be read by the sender and recipient on authorised devices, the San Francisco based developer boasts, bringing “NSA top-secret level encryption to the masses”.

A “shredder” function runs in the background, constantly sweeping your device of data used in Wickr messages, and a user can control how “aggressively” the app shreds, based on the sensitivity of their messages.

One of its co-founders, Nico Sell, told Mashablethe app is so secure it could be successfully used by “an activist in Syria who is worried about enemy spies”.

Sell said she wanted to develop the app for kids to enjoy the increasingly rare privilege of private communication, but was also designed for “very high tension situations, where if information gets out ahead of time, people could get hurt”.

HOW IT’S BEING USED

There’s a reasonably high-tension situation in Canberra right now. According to The Australian, some of our federal politicians are using the app for the second reason Sell says it was developed.

And in deliciously ironic contrast to the government’s fight for metadata retention, they’re reportedly using Wickr’s metadata-stripping services to make their messages untraceable.

It’s said to have been the preferred method of communications in the lead up to the February 9 leadership spill motion.

“Politicians adopted the app because they were concerned all other correspondence, including texts and emails, could be traded, copies or was insecure,” The Australian says.

The app can also be used, like Snapchat, to “add graffiti, moustaches, top hats, black helicopters, cat masks and explosions” to photos.

But Wickr isn’t the only app of its kind, and pollies aren’t the only people using them.

Local cyber security expert Phil Kernick chief technology officer at CQR told news.com.au there were three classes of people who contribute to the demand for secret messaging apps.

“There’s informants, people wanting to relay sensitive information to either journalists or authorities who want protection, and there’s obviously criminals who want to keep what their activities secret,” he said.

“But more recently everybody’s concerned about security, so when these apps become cheap, easy and they work, then people who didn’t have security concerns before see it as accessible and believe it’s something they need.”

But, he said, politicians don’t really fit into any of these categories.

“If federal politicians believe they need more security, it kind of runs against the data retention argument. The push is that they’re doing this to get around their own data retention regime, and the irony is just extraordinary.”

BUT HOW SAFE IS IT?

Secret messaging apps like Wickr and Blackphone use special encryption to make it difficult for anyone to intercept or retrieve communication, but their operators have a responsibility to cooperate with law enforcement when required.

“It’s great that they say these things are really secure, but if they get given a subpoena to hand account information across, then they’re going to,” Mr Kernick says.

“It’s also one thing to trust that an app is very secure, but if it hasn’t been reviewed by the Australians Signals Directorate, I wouldn’t trust it.”

Also like Snapchat, there’s no escaping screenshots — Apple doesn’t allow developers to disable the screen capture function on iPhones.

While Wickr’s developers say removing location, time stamps and other identifying metadata gives “the best plausible deniability”, they also warn messages to use at their own risk.

“There is no magic pill for betrayal,” Wickr warns.

“Your messaging partner knows your secret therefore we encourage you to only send private messages to people you trust!”

Something for ministers to keep in mind ...