Artificial intelligence, a lack of awareness of data privacy and regulatory pressures are among the biggest threats to the future of private messaging, according to Alex Linton and Chris McCabe, CEOs of decentralized messaging app Session.
The EU’s efforts to mandate the scanning of private messages through its chat control legislation have been heavily criticized by privacy advocates, but Linton, president of the Session Technology Foundation, told Cointelegraph that AI is another front to push.
The ability of artificial intelligence to analyze information on a device and store that data creates “huge privacy issues, huge security issues,” and the ability to communicate privately could be fundamentally “impossible to do on the average cell phone or the average computer,” Linton said.
“If it’s integrated at the operating system level or higher, it could also completely bypass encryption on your messaging app, and that information could be fed into an AI black box, and then God knows what happens to it from there,” he added.
“It’s important that we push against this kind of deep integration of AI into all of our devices, because at that point you just don’t know what’s going on in your device anymore.”
Linton said the problem can often be exacerbated when lawmakers take advice on how to deal with privacy issues from the tech giants responsible for pushing the technology on users.
How your network data is used
McCabe, co-founder of Session, said many people are unaware of how their online data is stored and used, as well as the dangers of mass data collection by big tech companies.
Creator of ChatGPT OpenAI exposed last month that an attacker breached a third-party data analytics provider, exposing some of its user data, which it warned could be used for phishing or social engineering attacks.
The chatbot feature was also deactivated found share chat history on the open web.
“A lot of people aren’t aware of what’s going on with their data, how, what you can actually do with someone’s data and how much money you can make from it,” McCabe said.
He added that the data can be used to “manipulate people through things like advertising or doing things they don’t even know they’re doing or don’t want to do based on their data.”
Linton added that raising awareness, making people aware of the privacy issue and helping them understand the tools available is a key part of their work.
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“There’s a lot of pressure if you’re in the business of building encrypted messengers or building encrypted tools in general. Proposed or enacted regulations are being adopted in many jurisdictions,” Linton said. “A lot of negative media attention can come with that.”
“The people who literally work on this technology feel that pressure, so it’s important that the general public understands that these tools are trying to help. They’re trying to protect your data. They’re trying to make the online space a better place.”
From part-time tech geeks to full-time privacy advocates
McCabe said the idea for Session was born out of a desire to use decentralized technology in a meaningful way and to tackle privacy-related issues.
He was an electrician and “occasional tech geek” in his spare time, but being fired from his job opened the door to “all in on Web3”, and he started building Session 2018.
Linton, also a self-confessed “occasional tech geek,” was a reporter for Australia’s national broadcaster ABC and saw first-hand why private communication is so important.
The session is open source and uses end-to-end encryption, meaning that only the sender and receiver can read the messages.
McCabe said it was designed to remove common identifiers and metadata that traditional messengers rely on, such as phone numbers, and has no central servers.
Related: Cipherpunk values are dying, but “not dead yet”
“It’s just removing that whole middleman, which if you’re worried about censorship or control or your own sovereignty, removing the middleman is the key to that, and that’s what we’ve done,” he said.
Session was one of two crypto messaging apps to receive support from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin last month, in the form of a combined $760,000 in Ether and a recommendation to try them out.
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