Alex Linton and Chris McCabe, executives at decentralized messaging app Session, say artificial intelligence, a lack of awareness of data privacy and regulatory pressure are among the biggest threats to the future of private messaging.
While the EU's efforts to require the scanning of private messages through chat regulations have been heavily criticized by privacy advocates, Session Technology Foundation Chairman Linton told Cointelegraph that AI is another challenge that must be thwarted.
AI's ability to analyze information on a device and store that data poses “significant privacy and security issues,” Linton said, and the ability to communicate privately could become essentially “impossible on the average cell phone or the average computer.”
“If it's integrated at the operating system level or above, it might even be possible to completely bypass encryption in messaging apps. That information will be sent to a black box AI and God knows what happens from there,” he added.
“It’s important to argue against this kind of deep integration of AI into every device, at which point you no longer know what’s going on in the device.”
Linton said the problem is often made worse when lawmakers take advice on how to address these privacy concerns from the tech giants responsible for pushing the technology onto users in the first place.
How to use online data
McCabe, co-founder of Session, said many people are unaware of how their online data is stored and used, and the dangers of mass data collection by big tech companies.
OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, revealed last month that its third-party data analytics provider had been compromised by attackers, exposing some user data and warning that it could be used in phishing and social engineering attacks.
It was also discovered that the now-disabled chatbot feature was sharing chat history on the open web.
“A lot of people don't realize what's going on with their data, what they can actually do with someone else's data, and how much money they can make from it,” McCabe says.
He added that the data could be used to “manipulate people, such as through advertising, or to do things based on their data that they don't even realize they're doing or don't want to do.”
Linton added that raising awareness, making people aware that privacy is an issue and helping them understand the tools available to them is an important part of their work.
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“If you're in the business of building encrypted messengers or creating encrypted tools, there's generally a lot of pressure. Regulations that have been proposed or enacted have been adopted by many jurisdictions,” Linton said. “There could be a lot of negative media attention that comes with that.”
“The literal people working on this technology are feeling that pressure, so it's important that the public understands that these tools are trying to help. They're trying to protect your information. They're trying to make the online space a better place.”
From part-time tech geek to full-time privacy advocate
McCabe said the idea for the session came from a desire to use decentralized technology in a meaningful way to combat privacy-related issues.
He was an electrical engineer and a “part-time tech geek” in his spare time, but extra work opened the door for him to “go full-on with Web3,” and he started building Session in 2018.
Linton, who also considers himself a “part-time tech geek,” was a journalist for Australia's national broadcaster ABC, where he saw first-hand why private communication is so important.
Sessions is open source and uses end-to-end encryption. That is, only the sender and recipient can read the message.
McCabe said the service is designed to remove the usual identifiers and metadata that traditional messengers rely on, such as phone numbers, and there is no central server.
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“You just cut out the middleman altogether. If you're concerned about censorship, control, self-sovereignty, cutting out the middleman is the key to achieving that, and that's what we did.”
Sessions was one of two crypto messaging apps to receive support from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin last month in the form of a total of $760,000 in ether and a recommendation to try them out.
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