Wickr
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| Founded | 2012 |
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| Headquarters | San Francisco, United States |
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Key people
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| Website | www |
| Developer(s) | Wickr Inc. |
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| Initial release | June 2012 |
| Stable release |
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| Development status | Active |
| Operating system | iOS, Android, desktop |
| Type | Instant Messaging |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | www |
Wickr is a US-American software company based in San Francisco. The company is best known for its instant messenger application of the same name.
The Wickr instant messaging app allows users to exchange end-to-end encrypted and content-expiring messages, including photos, videos, and file attachments. The software is available for the iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, and Linux operating systems.
Wickr was founded in 2012 by a group of security experts and privacy advocates. Nico Sell served as the company's CEO until May 2015 when she became the co-chairman of Wickr and CEO of Wickr Foundation, the newly launched nonprofit whose seed funding was provided by the company. Mark Fields, who previously led CME's Strategic Investment Group, became the company’s CEO. He served in that position until November 2016, when he was replaced by Joel Wallenstrom, co-founder of iSec Partners, becoming the company's CEO and President.
Initially unveiled on iOS and later on Android, the Wickr app allows users to set an expiration time for their encrypted communications. In December 2014, Wickr released a desktop version of its secure communications platform. The release of the desktop Wickr app coincided with introducing the ability to sync messages across multiple devices, including mobile phones, tablets, and computers.
All communications on Wickr are encrypted locally on each device with a new key generated for each new message, meaning that no one except Wickr users have the keys to decipher their content. In addition to encrypting user data and conversations, Wickr strips metadata from all content transmitted through the network.
Since its launch, Wickr has gone through regular security audits by prominent information security organizations, which verified Wickr's code, security and policies. Wickr has also launched a "bug bounty program" that offers a reward to hackers who can find a vulnerability in the app.
On January 5, 2015, the Electronic Frontier Foundation gave Wickr a score of 5 out of 7 points on their "Secure Messaging Scorecard". It received points for having communications encrypted in transit, having communications encrypted with keys the provider didn't have access to (end-to-end encryption), making it possible for users to independently verify their correspondent's identities, having past communications secure if the keys were stolen (forward secrecy), and having completed a recent independent security audit. It was missing points because its source code was not open to independent review (open source), and because its security design was not well-documented. In 2015, Wickr published a white paper outlining the that they use for end-to-end encryption.
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