American University of Sharjah drop out launches Secret Clone – TellM

Mohammad Nour, 24, a former American University of Sharjah student who now resides in Germany has launched an Anonymous chat app called TellM. The app offers a public messaging board, but the twist is that users’ identities are never disclosed, even to the people they chat with. It’s just like Secret, except it is now available on Android & iOS and you can download it globally.

Nour lived in the UAE as a teenager and caused a stir in 2010 when he collected the Facebook photos of thousands of his fellow students at the American University of Sharjah without their permission and used them in an application in which users could decide whether they found them attractive or not. He was subsequently suspended and left the University to form his startup “Shoutit” , a website that matched buyers with sellers based on their interests.

His latest app is unique in that after a person registers, using their mobile phone, their number will be encrypted so it cannot be read even by the company’s own servers.

“The information you send cannot be read by anyone outside your circle of friends, and your identity is not even known by us,” Nour said.

We gave the app a shot and thought it was one of the better designed apps that are associated with this region. The sign-up process is pretty straight forward – enter your mobile phone number, receive an authentication code and you’re in. Being a relatively new app, you probably won’t see any messages on there, but you get twenty invites – so go ahead and choose wisely. Keep in mind, the more friends you have, the harder it gets to guess who has shared the anonymous messages.

The app closely resembles the controversial app Secret and if you’re wondering about the motivation behind making such an app, check out Kevin Rose’s interview with the founder of Secret.

Check out the TellM app for yourself using the links below:

iOS download

Android download

Source: The National

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