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Wickr is shutting down its encrypted messaging app for consumers, known as Wickr Me, next year. But the company said this would not affect products and services aimed at businesses and organizations.
The company, owned by Amazon Web Services, announced the shutdown of its messaging app in a blog post last week. The official Wickr Me page will now greet users with the notice of the app’s closure, but the company will still allow new registrations through Dec. 31.
New users will still have ample time to use the Wickr Me app, though. The company’s current plan is to keep its services up until Dec. 31, 2023.
“After careful consideration, we will be concentrating Wickr’s focus on securing our business and public sector customers’ data and communications with AWS Wickr and Wickr Enterprise, and have decided to discontinue our consumer product, Wickr Me,” the blog post reads.
The announcement of Wickr Me’s closure came months after NBC News reported that the app was allegedly used by defendants in child sexual abuse and child pornography cases. The report cited information from 72 state and federal cases over the last five years. The publication added that “almost none” of the court documents mentioned notable help from Wickr except when there were legal mandates and search warrants involved.
The Wickr messaging app was first launched in 2012, which offered individuals a more secure way to communicate. It offers end-to-end encryption and allows users to exchange disappearing messages and files on its initial release. The company later introduced other encrypted communication services and products, including Wickr RAM (for military use), Wickr Pro, and Wickr Enterprise.
Of the three services, Wickr Pro is somewhat the closest in nature to Wickr Me, with a slew of additional features. Wickr Pro allows users to register with their email addresses to allow account recovery, along with screen sharing, conference calls, admin controls, and transfer of larger file sizes. Wickr Me, on the other hand, lets users register with a unique ID.
Meanwhile, Wickr implied that it would introduce a new feature through AWS Wickr that would allow businesses and organizations to communicate with customers. “We also realize that some of our business and public sector customers use Wickr to communicate with individual users outside their network,” Wickr added. “We’re focusing on enabling this in AWS Wickr, too.”
