Silent Circle, a startup providing private encrypted communications solutions, today announced that its Silent Text secure messaging and file transfer app is now available for Android.
Available via Google Play and adding to existing support for iOS, Silent Text for Android enables iOS and Android users to communicate privately through Silent Circle’s peer-to-peer encrypted platform enabling secure voice, video, text and file transfer between mobile devices.
Silent Circle’s apps and services route encrypted calls, messages and attachments exclusively between Silent Circle users’ iOS and Android devices without logging metadata associated with subscribers’ communications, the company said.
According to the company, Silent Text for Android’s features include:
• Burn Notice feature allows users to have any messages sent self-destruct after a time delay
• Send map locations encrypted and controlled
• Peer-to-peer key management — keys are on each device, not on Silent Circle’s servers
• Only the sender and the receiver of the text can decrypt and read the information
• Send any file up to 100MB
“Relentless surveillance and espionage by state-sponsored, commercial, and criminal actors worldwide continues to demonstrate vulnerabilities in cellular calls and mobile communications that executives, government officials and others rely on everywhere they travel,” said Silent Circle CTO and co-founderJon Callas. “At a time when large-scale network monitoring is making many cloud, telecommunications and other businesses’ privacy policies almost moot, our services give employees and individuals with sensitive information the confidence to communicate and collaborate anywhere.”
Silent Text for Android follows the launch of its “Silent Phone” app for Android, which the company released back in January, and provides secure mobile voice and video calling.
“With our latest versions of Silent Phone and Silent Text, we give iOS and Android users a private, end-to-end encrypted platform for calling, messaging and sharing files designed to be inherently more secure than other mediums,” Callas continued. “Beyond strong encryption, our apps give users important, additional privacy controls, such as Silent Text’s ability to wipe messages and files from a recipient’s device with a ‘Burn Notice.’”
Last month, Silent Circle made headlines after it decided to shut down Silent Mail, an encrypted email service that it offered. The decision was a preemptive move to prevent government spying, the company said. While the company said that it had not received subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else by any government, the company wanted to be proactive and decided to shut down Silent Mail.
With the goal of revolutionizing privacy and mobile security, the company was co-founded by former Navy SEAL sniper Mike Janke, and PGP creator Phil Zimmermann, and has created an advanced platform for encrypted text, e-mail, mobile phone and video teleconferencing services through a secure, proprietary network and set of applications.
Silent Circle Mobile, which includes Silent Phone and Silent Text, is priced at $9.95 per month or $99.95 per year.