Wickr Me is shutting down December 31, 2023 | Hacker News Reader

Wickr Me is shutting down December 31, 2023

wickr.com

72 pointsvorpalhex71 comments

In Australia, the majority of drug deals are organised on Wickr. It's so popular amongst criminals, drill rappers mention it in their bars [1]

This is going to be a huge loss (or gain if you're in law enforcement, I guess).

[1] https://genius.com/17161424

Not just in Australia

In Finland as well, and funnily enough it is also mentioned in some Finnish rap songs [1]

[1] https://genius.com/22801616

what is Finnish Rap about ? Don't tell me it is just about weather xD

Ironic, given few in Australia had heard of it before pur politicians endorsed its secrecy.

https://www.news.com.au/technology/wickr-app-the-snapchat-fo...

Wickr was one of the biggest sourcing platforms in the psychedelic world. It will be a huge loss for Psychonauts.

Well it was also the software of choice for people who wanted their conversation with faraway peers to be, as expected, private.

Any predictions about where they'll move to? I'd be surprised if they start picking a set of different apps.

I work in security. People from my past have occasionally popped up as new signal users, I imagine they care about operational security for other reasons than what I do

A friend of mine recently joined signal, and she had a bunch of contacts message her saying they didn’t know she was into take drugs…

Session is quite popular in Finland after Wickr.

Also hardcore drugs and antidotes

Antidotes?

It is just more drugs to relieve the other drug effects

The comments mentioning how Wickr is used for bad things seem a bit naive?

Surely it's only used for bad things because it's one of the few places for communicating without the risk of surveillance?

When Wickr is gone won't the criminals will just move to the next best app which allows them to communicate without surveillance?

I've been expecting this since they were bought by amazon last year.

Kind of infuriating that the blog post doesn't mention what "Wickr Me" is. The link in the page footer to "Wickr Me" only goes back to the same blog post.

Wickr is/was one(or the only) privacy oriented chat app that didn't require your phone number or your phone book. For some reasons there is no replacement. All the "privacy" messaging apps want your phone number and phone book.

Last I looked Session[0] does not and was created for just that purpose but without sacrificing much in the way if UX.

0: https://getsession.org/

Briar is another anonymous, fully decentralized chat app. It rides atop Tor rather than reimplementing an anonymous network protocol like Session does.

https://briarproject.org

As a side note I used to use Wickr, then moved over to Signal, as Signal also could do SMS. Now they are getting rid of SMS :'( .

Any alternatives where I can do secure messaging and standard SMS/MMS?

Signal isn't dropping SMS by choice, but because the APIs aren't being exposed on Android going forward. You won't find a replacement until that changes.

Unless your an Android Device Manufacturer, you can't get access to the RCS APIs.

All SMS/MMS apps are stuck due to this, Google has known since 2013 that they need to open up RCS but has kept it as a walled garden instead.

SESSION, the chat program that runs over the Oxen network (a Tor alternative) is much better to my mind. Voice, text, chat, all e2e encrypted and not requiring a phone number like Signal.

https://getsession.org/

The headline is misleading, it's only about their consumer product Wickr Me, not about the full company shutting down.

Pretty sure Wickr Me used to simply be called Wickr, back when Wickr was just a chat app.

Ok, we've put Me in the title above. Thanks!

Bur Wickr Pro, used by companies for internal communication, will continue to exist it seems. That’s good.

What kind of company gets an app popular with drug dealers for their internal communication?

If your app is not popular with terrorists and child rapists, it is not secure.

I doubt that is 100% true in either direction. People, especially non geeks can be duped into thinking something is secure

If an app is popular only with terrorists and child rapists, it's a weird choice for a business.

I know Australia's Ex-Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, used Wickr while he was in office.[0]

[0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-03-03/malcolm-turnbull-uses...

Drug dealers are one thing, but this just goes to show some truly awful people are using it

Militaries, for one. https://wickr.com/secure-communication-for-the-military/

Another nail out of the coffin for decentralised platforms

Used it for a few weeks, absolute trash. There is a lot that is noticeably missing if you've ever used Slack. Org ended up on Mattermost, it has its quirks (like delayed notifications) but we're very happy.

So AWS bought Wickr in 2021, and now they shut it down.

Let's hope they buy capitalism next.

Can you please not post shallow dismissals, or comments in the flamewar style generally, to HN? You've unfortunately been doing that quite a bit, and we're trying for something else here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Wickr is a notorious hideout for pedophiles sharing CSAM. I wonder if that had anything to do with this?

Yeah I only heard of it as a place to buy hard drugs.

Others as a user/pass - anonymous, as expected - communications system that was selected by the Air Force of the USA.

Any private end-to-end encryption solution could be considered a hideout for pedophiles or drug trade.

Wickr didn't require a phone number for account registration or identification so it attracted a higher proportion.

So E2E chats in Telegram have the same problem.

Every good thing can be used by bad people.

Telegram needs a phone number to sign up.

Telegram needs to store your messages in an unencrypted manner on their own servers but hey, at least no one "else" can see any of your message over the network due to their awesome E2E support.

Oh wow, looks like Signal requiring a phone number strikes a good balance.

No it doesn’t.

Yea, it is.

As you can only pick two of three choices to protect:

- identity

- its message content

- resistance to forgery

Wickr is hardly the only platform with end-to-end encryption not requiring phone numbers. The same applies to Matrix, for example. That's not a valid rationale or explanation for shutting down a platform.

So just move to Matrix clients (Element, Fluffychat) or Wire, Session, Tox, etc.

I think Wire also moved to enterprise only, sadly. At least it appeared that way last time I visited.

TIL so replace in my list Wire with Briar

unlike say, Walmart and Purdue.. very legal there

Similar things have been said for people who pay with cash.

Used by "people with something to hide", and by people with dignity - people who deem it inappropriate to allow being tracked: "people with everything to hide".

Any hotel could be a haven for drug dealing and prostitution.

Haven't heard about that but I know people use it to buy drugs quite often, as in the dealer will message you through Wickr, then you transfer crypto payments and they either mail it or drop it off. A breeding ground for scams related to this as well.

> the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had invested $1.6 million into Wickr via the CIA's shell company In-Q-Tel (…) Wickr markets itself to government agencies (…) On June 25, 2021, Wickr was acquired by Amazon (…) the founder of the controversial private security firm Blackwater, is one of the principal investors.

Checks out lol

Yeah if it wasn’t comped before, it sure was after that.

Well, maybe?

HUMINT types around the world rely on very pedestrian means to communicate with their assets, so one might imagine it's a not-quite-banal but legitimate(?) use rather than straight-up infiltration.

This person is getting downvoted, but he's 1000% not wrong. It's bad.

This is reddit?! Almost!

Oh no, where will I get my drugs now? Oh wait, I don't do drugs, so anyway...

And even for druggies seems like Matrix should be sufficient enough or Wire, Session, Tox, etc.

Not doing drugs is not the flex that you seem to think it is.

It totally is.

judging by number of upvotes vs downvotes this comment gets today I learned HN is full of junkies

How do you define 'junkie'?

anyone who use illegal drugs regularly

How does that make one a junkie? Junkie implies they go around collecting junk to sell for drugs. Not all drug users are poor.

When you enter "junkie" into Google it gives you accurate definition "a drug addict", because that's what it is, just more pejorative synonym for "drug addict", since I hardly have any respect for junkies I don't feel like using diplomatic terms regarding them.

Same as "family" gives you (for now) also very clear definiton "a group of one or more parents and their children living together as a unit" which is quite shocking to see at woke Google, I am surprised they didn't update this horrible discriminatory definiton I just yesterday evening discussed with friends who called me names for following exact Google definition of family and not calling childless couple a family.

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