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Comment by mbesto | Hacker News Reader

Interesting - for a company/app that has to value security in order to keep users (unlike other apps, where sharing to a larger audience adds value) I could only assume that this type of marketing would only deter people and/or cause existing users to think twice about their data. I can just see Sally sitting with her iPhone in Charlotte, NC, looking at this thinking "Oh that's so sweet...what a minute how do they know I'm sending a txt to my bf in NYC?"

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As a Couple user, I can only say this doesn't really bother me. I was already aware that servers I communicate with can see my IP and that IP addresses tend to be correlated with geographic location. Additionally, the phone company whose network I use to send messages to Couple already knows all this and more about me. So this is simultaneously unsurprising and kind of cool to watch.

I was trying it, but I think I would have preferred to see higher security for something only used to communicate between two people. Since it's only two people, they could decide on a secret outside of the app and then encrypt all the information sent between them with this secret so that the server doesn't need to be trusted. Are there any apps for couples that do something like this?

Couple appears to encrypt information between client to server using SSL, but the information is stored plaintext on the server.

How do you know they don't encrypt it on the server?

It's not encrypted client side, so the server is getting it unencrypted. They also return the data unencrypted, so if it is stored encrypted, it's not that useful encryption since the server also knows how to decrypt it.

Also their privacy policy notes that they'll give authorities access to your messages if they receive a warrant.

Following in line with this thought, I've actually plugged in my iPhone (non-jailbroken), downloaded the sqlite database onto my computer, and was able to see all the messages and URLs of photos sent. Even photos marked as "secret" (the apps Snapchat-like feature of deleting and hiding photos).

I don't think they're billing it as a 'super-ultra secret encrypted messaging app', nor do they need to. "It's not Facebook" is enough to interest me.

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