Alternative to WhatsApp – without internet and without tracking

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is developing a new messaging app called Bitchat, which offers complete privacy and aims to compete with popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and Telegram. It comes at a time when new European Union regulations could weaken encryption and allow surveillance of messages, even if they are encrypted between sender and recipient.

The main advantage of the Bitchat app is that it does not use the internet. Instead, messages travel over a decentralized Bluetooth network. Each message is automatically forwarded from one device to another (within a range of up to 300 meters) until it reaches the recipient. Thanks to AES-256-GCM encryption, the content is accessible only to the recipient, and intermediaries or third parties cannot read the message.

Čas dostave sporočila je odvisen od števila uporabnikov in njihove medsebojne oddaljenosti. Ker se vse dogaja prek Bluetooth povezave, aplikacije ni mogoče cenzurirati ali onemogočiti, tudi če država prekine dostop do interneta ali mobilnih omrežij. Sporočila aplikacija Bitchat podpira vse osnovne funkcije, kot so skupinski klepeti, priljubljeni stiki in obvestila o “pingih”, a brez računov, telefonskih številk ali trajnih uporabniških oznak. S tem je v praksi onemogočeno sledenje sporočilom do posameznika.

Trenutno aplikacijo testira 10.000 uporabnikov telefonov iPhone. Ni še znano, ali bo nova sporočila aplikacija Bitchat javno dostopna – bilo pa naj bi znano v prihodnjih nekaj mesecih.