Web founder Tim Berners-Lee is one of the privacy advocates behind a newly launched service that combines social media, cloud storage, person-to-person, and group communications for privacy-conscious users.
The so-called MeWe private communications network spun out of online privacy company Sgrouples -- founded by online privacy advocate Mark Weinstein -- doesn't own, track, or share, information its members provide or share among one another. MeWe encrypts personally identifiable information and most of its communication is SSL-encrypted, and the platform was built with Scala and LISP.
MeWe follows a string of other privacy-oriented services, including secure mobile messaging service Wickr and Silent Circle, which offers private and secure voice, video, text, and file transfer services on mobile devices. The prospect of "leave no trace" communications has become more attractive to some more privacy-concerned users given the large amounts of data gathered by sites such as Facebook and Google, and especially in the wake of the NSA leaks exposing the agency's controversial online surveillance programs.
Weinstein describes the typical MeWe user like this: "I have social network fatigue. I want a global communications network where I can stay in touch with family, friends, and co-workers. But this is not another social media" platform, he says. "It's a private communication network... and we don't track" users or their activity, he says.
Sounds good enough to me. I just joined. To read more, click here.