Big Brother Isn’t Watching: Crypto Platform Offers ‘Secure Messaging’

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A beta platform for privacy-conscious individuals enables messages, recordings and files to be sent to contacts with full encryption and privacy.

A new “feature-rich ecosystem” has been created for privacy-conscious individuals who want to keep their communications confidential and their data secure.

The team of networking technology enthusiasts behind Utopia say it wants to create an antidote to a world of total surveillance — delivering a platform that offers freedom, anonymity and no censorship.

Utopia has been in development for six years, all with the motivation of building an environment in which “Big Brother” isn’t watching the public’s every move. The team says its decentralized peer-to-peer network enables users to communicate with whomever they want, whenever they want — all while enjoying “guaranteed” freedom of speech. Every user’s physical location is kept anonymous, and measures have been put in place to ensure communication and data cannot be intercepted by third parties. As a result, account data is encrypted and kept on the user’s own device. 

How it works

Upon logging into the platform, Utopia users can send and receive instant messages and voice recordings to their contacts. High-speed elliptic curve cryptography is used to secure these communications.

The ecosystem also boasts uMail, which developers describe as a more secure alternative to email. It has been built in a way that makes it familiar to those who have only used mainstream email providers until now — complete with an inbox, a trash folder, filters and search functionality.

Also, any type of file can be transferred to contacts — irrespective of its size. Utopia says this means that communications with friends, family and colleagues is only as limited as a user’s imagination. From holiday pictures to financial reports, draft documents to images of artwork, the process of uploading and downloading files is designed to be as simple as possible. Better still, images can be accessed through a built-in viewer.

Financial functionality is also delivered in the form of uWallet, a service that’s integrated directly into the Utopia interface. Payments in Crypton, the platform’s native coin, can be made and accepted with ease — and users can do this without disclosing their public key. Away from the Utopia ecosystem, merchants can also integrate it into their websites to offer a new payment method to their customers. According to developers, cryptographic security has been a number-one priority — ensuring that the coin cannot be manipulated by organizations or governments. This is achieved without compromising on the freedom to complete transactions from anywhere in the world. Better still, a concerted effort has been made to keep transaction fees to a bare minimum.

Ready to be used

The team behind Utopia says its software is fully functional and in beta mode, meaning interested users can start experimenting with it immediately. This testing stage is expected to last for three months, paving the way for the project to fully launch later this year — the date of Utopia’s official release is Oct. 3.

The company notes that its users can work with Utopia Name System (UNS) — similar to DNS — in which they can host websites inside Utopia network that are accessible with the built-in Idyll browser, an alternative to the Tor network.

Developers have placed an emphasis on ensuring that its users can determine the future direction of the project and put forward suggestions about the features they would like to see introduced.

Utopia says its software and full functionality is completely free, meaning that no one-time or recurring payments will need to be made.                                                                                       

The project’s team says there are endless ways that early adopters can contribute their expertise, skills and energy — from identifying bugs to promoting its platform to the wider world.