Secure p2p messaging comes one step closer

Bittorrent have released a public alpha of their p2p based chat app, Beep, for Android. Beep uses the same p2p technology as the bittorrent we all know and…well….know.

The idea behind Beep is a good one and I really hope it gets a wider audience. With Beep your discussions are full encrypted and the only copy of your data is held on your handset. You’re free to delete that history at any time. As it’s peer to peer based, there are no main servers in place which should make it virtually impossible for anyone to intercept your data enroute.

As with any chat service, or any socially orientated service, it will only take off if it’s widely adopted by the public. After all you can’t chat to someone on Beep if they haven’t installed it.

You can sign up with either an email or a mobile number, but importantly you can also use it in incognito mode, requiring no personally identifiable information. This is great for those of us who find ourselves in countries where freedoms are restricted. However I can also imagine it to be a spammers paradise as far as untraceable chat spam is concerned.

Because of the nature of the server-free-peer-to-peer technology used one down side is that chat messages can only be sent to a contact if they are online. After all, there wouldn’t be a server present to cache that chat message until they next come online. Perhaps a small price to pay.

Other Android issues in the current version are below;

• Android users will need to set the app to “Wi-Fi Only” unless you have an unlimited data plan; this is only for the time being while we iron out and issue related to battery and data-plan.
• While you can move a username from desktop to mobile, Bleep does not yet support moving an existing account from Android to the desktop.
• And while you can receive messages on multiple devices; messages sent will not be seen across all devices.
• As with our previous release, communications happen only when all parties are online – you cannot send offline photos or group chats asynchronously.

 

Check it out from the Play store today.