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10 apps for privacy and secure communication

Mobile security

With all the recent news about privacy violations, user data requests, gag orders and the like, it is useful to know that there are tools to communicate in safer ways. I can’t say that they are bullet-proof, as I’m not a security analyst, but at least you can add an extra layer of complexity to those trying to tap into your communications.

  1. Redphone – allows you to have encrypted phone calls
  2. TextSecure – for secure SMS/MMS communication
  3. Gibberbot – for encrtypted chat over Jabber (XMPP) or Google Talk (Hangouts), Facebook Chat, VKontakte, Yandex, Hyves, Odnoklassniki, StudiVZ, Livejournal, and more
  4. OscuraCam – helps you censor out parts of an image like a phone number, license plate, a face…or body part
  5. NoteCipher – stores encrypted notes on your mobile device
  6. GNU Privacy Guard for Android – to encrypt anything, from notes, photos.. any file and emails
  7. K-9 Mail – an open source email client with PGP support for sending and receiving encrypted emails
  8. Orbot – a free proxy app for your mobile device that encrypts your traffic using the TOR network.

    On the browser you can use:

  9. Mailvelope – for encrypting your emails through webmail.
  10. Cryptocat – for private chats within the web browser using OTR encryption

As I mentioned before in my encryption tutorial, having your privacy is not about having something to hide, it’s more about protecting yourself.

In the words of author Ayn Rand:

Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage’s whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.

By Gabriel Saldaña

Gabriel Saldaña is a web developer, photographer and free software advocate. Connect with him on and Twitter

2 replies on “10 apps for privacy and secure communication”

Thanks for this great list, this is very interesting. There also is ugo.io which is very young but full of promise to transfer files for private purpose.

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