What is it?: An app allowing you to have text or email conversations with full confidentiality by hiding the message until you swipe over the words, then self-destructing after the message has been read.
How much does it cost?: Free!
How does it work?: After signing up using your email address, you are prompted for your phone number(s) to be added to your Confide account. Each email address or text message that you add to your account will be monitored and given confidentiality. The Confide team then sends you a test text message so that you can see how it works. Your contacts are added to the app so that you can either text/email or send them an invitation to try out the app as well. When you send someone a message who does not have Confide, the recipient will be informed that they'll need to download the app in order to receive the message. Once a message comes through, each word is blocked out in orange until you swipe your finger over it, which reveals one word of the message at a time. As the words are revealed, the text that has already been read turns from orange to gray until the entire message has been read. At that point, you either reply or return to the menu. Returning to the menu discards the message. The inbox will show who has sent you a message along with the subject and date, but you're not allowed to click on it. Replying leaves no conversation history like with regular texts and emails, and there is even a screenshot blocker attached to the app. So if you're conversing with someone and they try to take a screenie of the message, not only will you be notified but the message will automatically self-destruct. Pretty nifty, right? This works with email conversations, text conversations with both regular cell numbers and even those with textPlus as long as one (and eventually both) users have the app downloaded.
Available platforms: Android & iTunes, there is no "full"/website version of this app.
My thoughts:
I downloaded this app Friday night and I love it so far. It does everything that the app says it will do, from keeping my message encrypted to allowing me to only see a word at a time, then destructing once I have read it. I haven't been able to try this with anything other than test messages because I'm on a temp phone that isn't a smartphone (long complicated story short, I have an old Cricket not-smartphone because my Droid broke sometime last month, but I have an unflashed Nexus that I use for everything except for calls until I can afford to flash the phone and switch my service. For the time being, that's how I access apps) but from what I did see of the app, it works exactly as advertised. I think it's great that in this age of oversharing, mass sharing and abundant screenshotting of everything under the sun, there's finally a way for us to retrieve some of that ever-dwindling privacy in our everyday conversations. The only problem I see with this app is that for the tech-savvy cheater, Confide has the potential to save his entire ass.
Rating:
I love it!
Do you have Confide? Will this app keep some of you (like myself) out of jail--because apparently, joking about kicking someone in the throat can be used against you in court if you follow through on said 'joke'--or will it keep some of you (not like me) out of divorce court? LOL Let me know!
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