BitTorrent launches private secure messenger Bleep to the public
We looked at BitTorrent Bleep in mid-2014 for the first time when it launched as a private beta. The messaging application, available for the mobile platforms Android and iOS, and the desktop operating systems Windows and Mac OS X, promised end-to-end encrypted messaging in a decentralized environment.
BitTorrent launched Bleep to the public yesterday and with it come new features and improvements. Time to take another look at the application to see what changed and how it works now.
The first great feature of Bleep is that you don't need to register an account to start using it. All you do is enter a nickname which your friends and contacts see in their contacts bar and in chat.
You may however have Bleep look through your list of contacts to find friends who already use it or add an email address or phone number to it so that your friends can find you easier.
That's however completely optional and if you prefer not to do so, you don't have to as there is another option to add contacts to Bleep.
Note: if you don't add an email or phone number, a not-verified badge is displayed in the contacts listing.
All Bleep installations use public and private keys, and offer options to add contacts using public keys. So, to add a contact without revealing anything about you, you simply add their public key to Bleep.
On mobile devices, this is usually done by scanning a QR Code using Bleep's built-in scanner while desktop users need to enter the public key manually.
One issue here is that the public code is not displayed on mobile devices while it is displayed on desktop systems which means that you cannot add mobile users currently to desktop environments that Bleep is running on. So, if you want to establish a connection between a desktop client and mobile device, you need to initiate it from the mobile device and verify it afterwards on the desktop.
To communicate select a contact and start writing a message. One of the new features of Bleep is the whisper option which is used to send self-destructing messages from mobile devices or the desktop apps.
Please note that you need to hold down the Shift-key on the desktop to send a whisper as there is no indicator or button you can press or tap on as there is on mobile devices.
To do so select the whisper option on your mobile device or hold-Shift on the desktop, enter a message and add photos if you like, and hit send afterwards.
The message is displayed on the recipients device as a new whisper message. It needs to be activated first and is from that moment on displayed for 25 seconds before it is deleted automatically.
The protection on mobile devices blurs some information on mobile devices from being captured. Basically, the name of the sender is not displayed in full on whisper pages. While you can reveal it, that will automatically blur any photo that is visible in the conversation so that one or the other cannot be captured this way.
But Bleep is not only about texting and sending pictures as it supports audio calls as well. Simply activate the call option after you have selected an account to call that account from within Bleep.
Calls just like messages are protected end-to-end and connected directly between recipients without use of the cloud.
Verdict
There is certainly no abundance of messaging applications but Bleep sets itself apart in several ways that I like a lot.
For instance, it can be used without revealing information about yourself or even registering an account. While that limits visibility somewhat, it may not be an issue at all depending on how you want to use Bleep.
It does a lot of things right from a privacy point of view besides that. Connections are direct end-to-end encrypted so that personal information or metadata are not leaked to a cloud server somewhere on the Internet.
Doesn’t Windows 8 know that www. or http:// are passe ?
Well it is a bit difficulty to distinguish between name.com domains and files for instance.
I know a service made by google that is similar to Google bookmarks.
http://www.google.com/saved
@Ashwin–Thankful you delighted my comment; who knows how many “gamers” would have disagreed!
@Martin
The comments section under this very article (3 comments) is identical to the comments section found under the following article:
https://www.ghacks.net/2023/08/15/netflix-is-testing-game-streaming-on-tvs-and-computers/
Not sure what the issue is, but have seen this issue under some other articles recently but did not report it back then.
Omg a badge!!!
Some tangible reward lmao.
It sucks that redditors are going to love the fuck out of it too.
With the cloud, there is no such thing as unlimited storage or privacy. Stop relying on these tech scums. Purchase your own hardware and develop your own solutions.
This is a certified reddit cringe moment. Hilarious how the article’s author tries to dress it up like it’s anything more than a png for doing the reddit corporation’s moderation work for free (or for bribes from companies and political groups)
Almost al unlmited services have a real limit.
And this comment is written on the dropbox article from August 25, 2023.
First comment > @ilev said on August 4, 2012 at 7:53 pm
For the God’s sake, fix the comments soon please! :[
Yes. Please. Fix the comments.
With Google Chrome, it’s only been 1,500 for some time now.
Anyone who wants to force me in such a way into buying something that I can get elsewhere for free will certainly never see a single dime from my side. I don’t even know how stupid their marketing department is to impose these limits on users instead of offering a valuable product to the paying faction. But they don’t. Even if you pay, you get something that is also available for free elsewhere.
The algorithm has also become less and less savvy in terms of e.g. English/German translations. It used to be that the bot could sort of sense what you were trying to say and put it into different colloquialisms, which was even fun because it was like, “I know what you’re trying to say here, how about…” Now it’s in parts too stupid to translate the simplest sentences correctly, and the suggestions it makes are at times as moronic as those made by Google Translations.
If this is a deep-learning AI that learns from users’ translations and the phrases they choose most often – which, by the way, is a valuable, moneys worthwhile contribution of every free user to this project: They invest their time and texts, thereby providing the necessary data for the AI to do the thing as nicely as they brag about it in the first place – alas, the more unprofessional users discovered the translator, the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, the greater the aggregate of linguistically illiterate users has become, and the worse the language of this deep-learning bot has become, as it now learns the drivel of every Tom, Dick and Harry out there, which is why I now get their Mickey Mouse language as suggestions: the inane language of people who can barely spell the alphabet, it seems.
And as a thank you for our time and effort in helping them and their AI learn, they’ve lowered the limit from what was once 5,000 to now 1,500…? A big “fuck off” from here for that! Not a brass farthing from me for this attitude and behaviour, not in a hundred years.