An App That Encrypts, Shreds, Hashes and Salts

The app gives users the option to set a self-destruct timer

When it comes to mobile apps and social networks, the devil, increasingly, is in the default settings.

Companies have little, if any, incentive to let users opt out of services that siphon their personal data back to the advertisers who pay their bills. Nor do companies have any legal mandate to secure users’ personal information with hacker-proof encryption. The responsibility is very much on the user to opt out of services and read through the fine print in privacy policies to understand how their personal data is used, secured and sold.

A group of computer security experts want to turn that model on its head with Wickr, a new mobile app that they hope will set a new standard for how personal data is disseminated.

Wickr’s motto: The Internet is forever. Your private conversations don’t need to be. The app, which became available in Apple’s iTunes store on Tuesday, lets users transmit texts, photos and videos through secure and anonymous means previously reserved for the likes of the military and intelligence operatives.

Text messages, photos and videos sent via Wickr are secured using military-grade encryption and never stored. The service camouflages user names and other identifiable information, such as a phone’s identification number, by appending several random digits to each value, then mashing them up with a mathematical algorithm, a process security experts refer to as “salting” and “hashing.” Wickr hashes and salts that information several times and only stores the encoded result.

The app gives users the option to set a self-destruct timer for anything they send so that they can control how long a recipient views their videos, photos or texts before it disappears completely.