You’ve claimed that privacy is the new fame. Can you explain that?
It’s now so difficult to be private that it will be the new state everyone strives for. But I don’t think we have to convince people of the need for privacy, it’ll just happen naturally… [just as] fashion is always going from skinny jeans to bell-bottoms and back again. The generation below always over-corrects to the one before, and you can already see this happening.
You’ve created a messaging app, Wickr, that allows people to message each other in a completely secure, private way. A lot of people would say they’ve got nothing to hide, so why bother?
We’re just trying to be the number one messenger in the world. I think privacy and security are reasons why our users will stay with us because there is no way that your information can ever be used, viewed or kept. The difference between us and what the big companies are doing is that they are encrypting messages between a device and their servers, whereas we are doing it device to device. So, we don’t know who our users are, who they’re talking to or what they’re saying. We can’t hand that information over: we don’t have it.