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AWS acquires Wickr

aws.amazon.com

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Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#31

Post by manquer »

txru wrote: post #11
p0rkbelly wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS uses Slack Internally.

Amazon allows people to use Slack internally. Chime is still at least the back end for all meetings. And in practice, because Chime chat is still supported, many managers tell their teams to always keep Chime open in case someone messages them there. There’s no way to tell who is on Slack vs on Chime.

There is no difference, Slack itself tied up with AWS to use chime for their own voice/video calling [1]

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/4/21280829/slack-amazon-aws-...

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#32

Post by x0x0 »

surge wrote: post #3

Probably going to use it to replace Chime. Edit: For those that have never heard of it, its their own IM, that while publicly available, is mostly used internally for company communications, similar to Slack or Skype for Business. https://aws.amazon.com/chime/

Chime is a (crappy) zoom clone.

Our AWS account manager pushed us hard to use it for our checkins.

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#33

Post by waynesonfire »

cle wrote: post #10
thinkingkong wrote: post #2

Did hell just freeze over? AWS has acquired technology instead of simply copying someone elses? Im flabbergasted.

AWS has acquired many companies in the past. Off the top of my head, Biba (turned into Chime), Elemental, Cloud9, Annapurna, CloudEndure…I’m sure there’s more.

A9

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#34

Post by tptacek »

t-lan wrote: post #13
deadalus wrote: post #9

So, what are some good Wickr alternatives?

Great question. This is pretty unfortunate, data mining secure communications removes much of the value. Signal sold out a long time ago, not sure of another 'verified secure' platform.

Signal is entirely independent and hasn't been acquired by Amazon or any other big tech company. It remains the gold standard for security/privacy technology (whether it's packaged acceptably for everyone on HN is a different question, and I'm not saying you have to use it).

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#35

Post by malchow »

Increasingly clear that, at Amazon, the most passionate path to getting bigger is obtaining access to tax dollars.

... but Amazon's stock would be 1/4 the price if it were valued like Lockheed Martin.

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#36

Post by thefounder »

thanksforfish wrote: post #28
t-lan wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great question. This is pretty unfortunate, data mining secure communications removes much of the value. Signal sold out a long time ago, not sure of another 'verified secure' platform.

Signal sold out? How so?

Metadata stuff? They still require phone numbers(unlike wickr)

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#37

Post by smartbit »

deadalus wrote: post #9

So, what are some good Wickr alternatives?

Last March c’t tested some alternatives https://www.heise.de/select/ct/2021/8/2106310351115657652

    App        Security    #users    ease    Functio-   Price
              & privacy    Germany  of use    nality     
    Element      o           -        -         o        Free
    Signal       +           o        +         +        Free
    Telegram     -           +        ++        ++       Free
    Threema      +           o        o         o        $3-$4
    Whatsapp     o           ++       +         +        Free
    Wire         +           o        -         -        Free
    
    ++ very good     + good    o good enough    - bad

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#38

Post by colmmacc »

crmd wrote: post #19

You can be sure there is already a team working on the architectural changes needed to implement lawful intercept and passive surveillance on Wickr. This is what happens when a secure platform gets too big. The same thing happened to Skype.

I work on cryptography at AWS, and long before that I worked on Skype a bit, so I can't resist commenting! Wickr features end to end cryptography, https://wickr.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/WhitePaper_Wick..., and I can't see why we'd change that (and even that framing is a bit weird, I'm sure Wickr will continue to be autonomous but maybe with access to more resources from the rest of Amazon).

Increasingly, end-to-end cryptography is what customers expect. We also use end-to-end cryptography in other Amazon systems, most recently including Ring doorbells - https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/articles/360054941511-Unde...

Re: AWS acquires Wickr

#40

Post by habibur »

Feeling like I need to build my own end-to-end secure channel communication web app on my server.

As every other is getting sold. With current level of browser support, assuming that might not take too much time.

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