MeWeFree | Stay Low and Build With Mansa Me's Privacy Apps Xessages & Chilll
I’ve spent enough time on Twitter to know that there are a lot of folks would seem to want to keep their text messages private. Whatever your reason would be for keeping your message a secret, if you have an iPhone or iPad, there is a solution. That would be the Xessages app by Mansa Me, a Black-owned tech company.
It’s simple. First, you download the Xessages app from the Apple App Store. You have to make sure whomever you intend to message privately also has the app. Then, you can send or receive private messages including text or pictures. After messages are exchanged, you set a self-destruct timer and when the time is up, everything disappears forever. There are also group chat capabilities.
A few months back, I interviewed an anonymous developer at Mansa Me for Don Diva Magazine to get a little more background. The app was originally intended for hustlers and drug dealers who wanted to keep their communications out of the gaze of law enforcement. That makes perfect sense. Having covered high profile criminals for Don Diva for the past seven or so years, I know there are some folks who wish the cops hadn’t seen their text messages. However, I feel that there are other uses, based on my time online. I think Xessages would be perfect for people who like to send and receive nudes (naked pics for the uninitiated). Though I’m not an advocate, this app would work for cheaters. In addition to Xessages, Mansa Me also offers a private event organizing app called Chilll which is like a private Eventbrite that also has a self-destruct feature. This made me think of all the folks who throw weed-centered events and don’t want there to be any friction. Both apps made me think of activists who want to keep their organizing efforts on the low. I’m far from a technological whiz, so it really helped to have someone spell out what all this privacy stuff was all about. Here are a few excerpts that give a better look into these apps and what they do.
Here’s what the developer had to say about how Xessages works:
When you download Xessages, it adds an app to your messages app along the application bar. Basically, you click on the app icon in messages for the Xessages app, it launches and it allows you to type and send a message to someone, like a Xessages payload, as we call it, into the messages feed. So the end user who also will have to have Xessages to decrypt the message can tap it. It'll launch the app there and automatically, and they'll be able to read the message.
...after the person sees the message, if they don't elect to keep the message, it will automatically disappear forever. If they do elect to keep the message, they can't read the message after the self-destruct time that you select is up.
For example, we'll set a self-destruct time on the message of, like, one hour. So, if I sent you a message, you have up to one hour to open that message. After that, you can't ever open it. If you do, it just has nothing there.
If they decided to keep the message, let's say they see it right away and then they say, oh we want to keep this message, they still won't be able to see it again once that time expires.
Here is the developer’s more detailed explanation of the Chilll App:
Chilll is a way to host events privately and get paid for them. It's almost like you become your own ticket master and you can host parties, you can send invites, you can do all that kind of stuff. And it follows along the same mantra where it's very private, everything's deleted. Once the event is over, it's erased forever, so there's no ledger of the history, who was there, who paid, none of that kind of stuff. It's not even a concept of making friends. It really is driven off your contacts. A person you don't know technically can't be invited unless you share an invite code on the open internet.
Now, of course, you may be asking about how screenshots factor into this. Alas, neither app is immune to screenshots, but the developer also spoke on that:
Here's the thing about screenshotting because people always ask that question and say, oh well, Snapchat will let you know if someone's screenshotted the app. The problem with the logic there is that screenshot detecting really is not very helpful for anyone because first, a little background; this app is really just designed for two people who trust each other. If someone screenshotted it, you're compromised no matter what-- they could be sitting with the cops while you're messaging them. This is really for two trusted people to send discrete messages and that no one can intercept and after they're gone, they're gone. No one can subpoena them.
The reason why we think the screenshot doesn't hold value is because all someone actually has to do is to get another phone and take a picture of the other phone. So on-device screenshotting actually holds no value because if someone takes a screenshot on the phone, you can edit that screenshot to say whatever you want in the text, you can alter it and make it seem like they said something they didn't say, and there's no way to really verify that it's the actual screenshot. What does make sense if you're trying to set somebody up using the app would be to take another phone and record that phone, and that works for Snapchat, too. The end user wouldn’t know if you’re screenshotting their messages because they’re not even using their phone to take the picture anymore. So, there's really no way to actually stop that. It's like a gimmick Snapchat uses that people say, oh yeah, but you can tell when you screenshot the message. Yeah, but that's only if they took the screenshot on the same phone, not if they intercept the messages on the server because they're on a WiFi network and that kind of stuff, which are actually the cases you want to try to stop, but there's no solution for that.
To read my full interview with the Mansa Me developer about the Xessages and Chilll apps for Don Diva Magazine, click here.
To download the Xessages app, click here.
To download the Chilll app, click here.
