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Whisper (app)

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Whisper
Developer(s)WhisperText LLC
Initial releaseMarch 31, 2012 (2012-03-31)
Stable release
Android varies with device (February 11, 2016; 8 years ago (2016-02-11))[1]

iOS 5.8.9 (February 5, 2016; 8 years ago (2016-02-05))[2]

Operating systemAndroid, iOS
TypeSocial Networking
LicenseProprietary
Websitewhisper.sh Edit this on Wikidata

Whisper is a proprietary iOS and Android mobile app available without charge, which says that it allows users to send messages anonymously, and to receive replies.[3][4] Users post messages which are displayed as text superimposed over an image, similar to greeting cards.[5] The app was launched in March 2012 under the original name WhisperText by CEO Michael Heyward and Brad Brooks, who is the CEO of mobile messaging service TigerText.

Features

Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic describes the service as follows:

Anyone can post an anonymous message to the service in the form of an image macro: text overlaid on a picture. When you open the app, you see six such images. Each one has a "secret" on it. You can respond to a message publicly or privately, choosing a public anonymous post or a private pseudonymous chat. Users don't have a public identity in the app. While they do have persistent handles, there's no way to contact them except *through* the messages they post.[6]

User base

In April 2015, Whisper reached 10 million monthly active users.[7] Stories about the app have appeared in Forbes,[4] USA Today,[8] The Washington Post,[9] and Huffington Post,[10] and Heyward was featured on Forbes' Top 30 under 30 in Technology list in January 2014.[11] In early November 2013, Whisper was reported to have reached 2.5 billion monthly page views and nearly 3 billion page views in December 2013.[12] Whisper has 10 billion monthly page views as of Spring 2015.[13] In December 2015, it was reported that Whisper had reached 20 million active users, double the number of users it had six months earlier.[14][15]

Concept

The app purports to promote online anonymity. The developer claims this will prevent and combat cyberbullying.[16] This anonymity is claimed to have fostered a support network where concern and care among users has developed: according to Mashable, "The team regularly hears from users that the network's community has helped them stop self-harming behaviors."[17] Another premise behind the service was to counter the "best possible self" ego-driven self-aggrandizing "vanity" posting done on Facebook, and as an antidote to the phenomenon of "oversharing" and "too much information" that young users engage in online.[18] Business Insider, Forbes, and The Daily Dot have called it "the anti-Facebook,"[4][19][20] and Forbes Tech drew a contrast in stating that, "Whisper, even more than Snapchat, is the anti-Facebook."[4] The digital-news website SMU SMC summed up all these points together: "In addition to preventing cyber bullies, Whisper gives users the opportunity to confess to things that could potentially ruin marriages, friendships or result in loss of job, without suffering consequences. You can over share without any repercussions."[21]

Whisper has also been used as a platform for citizen journalism. In June 2014, amid widespread violence and unrest in Iraq and the Iraqi government's blocking of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, many Iraqis downloaded and used Whisper as a means of acting as real-time reporters, posting news and updates hours before the mainstream media, as well as sharing political views and personal thoughts and feelings.[22][23]

Technology

Development of the system was outsourced to Inaka,[24] a web and mobile app development consultancy based in Seattle, Washington and Buenos Aires, Argentina.[25] The original system back end used the Riak NoSQL database, but after performance problems with Riak the system was converted to use MySQL[26] and Apache Cassandra.[27] Since 2013, Whisper has brought its technology team in-house. Whisper now has 25 engineers in Venice, CA.[28]

Corporate

The company, WhisperText LLC, is led by CEO Michael Heyward.[29] The company is based out of Venice, California.[30]

WhisperText LLC received its first round of venture-capital funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners for $3 million in April 2013,[31] and then a second round of funding from Sequoia Capital, Trinity Capital, Krum Capital, and Lightspeed for $21 million in September 2013.[32] PitchBook, an independent private equity and venture capital research firm, forecasted in November 2013 that Whisper is one of the likeliest social platform IPOs, with a pre-money valuation of $85 million.[33] According to Om Malik, Founder and Senior Writer of GigaOM, Whisper was already, as of July 2013, valued at $100 million.[29] In May 2014, Whisper confirmed that it raised an additional $36 million in venture funding from Shasta Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, and Lightspeed Ventures.[34] Whisper has raised $61 million in total venture capital funding.[35]

Whisper has experimented with advertising by working with Fox Studios, MTV, Universal, Hulu and FX on customized branded campaigns.[36][37][38] In September 2015, Adweek revealed that Coca-Cola was using Whisper to market its #makeithappy anti cyber-bullying campaign to Whisper's users.[39] In late 2015, Whisper embarked on an advertising partnership with Disney and Pixar, starting with the promotion of the 3D animated movie The Good Dinosaur.[40]

Controversy

The Whisper app has been criticized for requiring access to smartphone features such as the camera and the user's contact list, which is disclosed when the app is downloaded on the Android platform.[41][self-published source?]

In May 2015, a 15-year-old girl from Bolton, Massachusetts was charged with making a threat on Whisper towards a school, referencing the Columbine shootings; she was tracked down using Whisper and GPS.[42]

Privacy policy

The company's privacy policy reveals that it will turn over information in the case of requests from law enforcement in order to comply with applicable laws for enforceable government requests such as a subpoena.[43] The Electronic Frontier Foundation's attorney Hanni Fakhoury commented in early 2014 that while Whisper may have no legal choice in the matter, "it’s the doublespeak that’s problematic." Fakhoury elaborated that: "You have to be very careful about selling a program as a secure way to secretly communicate, and then reserve the right to turn over that information whenever necessary."[44]

The Guardian allegations

In October 2014, The Guardian newspaper alleged that:[45][46]

  • Whisper retains every user's posts indefinitely in a central database (including "deleted" posts), together with each post's timestamp and approximate geolocation, even if the user has opted out of geolocation;
  • Whisper allegedly stores or processes user information outside the United States despite having told its users that "we process and store all information in the United States". Whisper has said that while it does use an outsourcing firm for content moderation based in the Philippines, no data is stored outside the US.[47]
  • Whisper allegedly provides data it gathers (including geolocation data) to the FBI, and MI5. Whisper participated in a DOD project about suicide prevention by sharing aggregate mentions of certain words on military bases.[48]

Whisper disputed nearly all the Guardian allegations[49] and made a point-by-point response to the Guardian.[50] After reading Whisper's response, Twitter’s former security head Moxie Marlinspike commented on Hacker News that Whisper "should never have claimed to provide anonymity if it had to track users to make the app function".[51] He pointed out that there are many "hard problems" that need to be solved before a service can claim to provide truly unlinkable anonymity, and that "there are projects like Tor that are approaching these types of problems seriously, but apps like Whisper or Secret end up poisoning the well and confusing users".[51] According to Marlinspike, Whisper was claiming that they could not track their users, when instead they were "squarely in the [would not] category".[51]

On October 23, 2014, U.S. Senator Jay Rockefeller asked Whisper's CEO to appear before him and the staff of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation to explain Whisper's tracking systems, tracking data retention, and data distribution. Buzzfeed, the Huffington Post and Fusion (TV channel) suspended their partnerships with Whisper.[52][53]

In March 2015, The Guardian published a clarification of the October 2014 piece in which it had made numerous allegations about Whisper's privacy protection and metadata policy.[54] The Guardian clarified the claims regarding user location, data storage, changes to Whisper's terms of service and security policy and the sharing of user data with the US Department of Defense. It also removed an opinion piece titled "Think you can Whisper privately? Think again."[55] The retraction was covered by several news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal,[56] CNN Money,[57] TechCrunch,[58] and Mashable.[59]

Xipiter report

On March 22, 2015, a security startup called Xipiter published a report in which they outlined serious security concerns and the resistance they met when trying to bring these concerns to the attention of Whisper.sh. They claimed that they could hijack a users' account, post (publicly or privately) as a hijacked user, and view all of a user's current and past private messages.[60] In response, Whisper's co-founder Michael Heyward and its CTO Chad DePue claimed that it is not possible to do such things with their app and accused Xipiter of fabricating their proof of concept video.[61] Xipiter's claims have yet to be validated or disproved by independent security researchers.[61]

Your Voice

Whisper Text LLC claims to have set up a companion nonprofit for its users called Your Voice, which, according to its web site, is "dedicated to raising awareness about mental health issues on college campuses". The site claims to provide resources and support for college students dealing with depression, anxiety, eating disorders, sexuality and LGBTQ issues, bullying, suicide prevention, and stress management.[62] The web site provides links to various services run by other organizations, but offers no services of its own. The contact telephone number on the web site to call for help is the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.[63]

See also

References

  1. ^ WhisperText LLC (February 11, 2016). "Whisper". Google Play. Google. Retrieved February 16, 2016.
  2. ^ WhisperText LLC (February 5, 2016). "Whisper". App Store. Apple. Retrieved February 16, 2016.
  3. ^ Lawler, Ryan (May 16, 2013). "Now With More Than 1.5B Page Views A Month, Secret Sharing App Whisper Launches On Android". TechCrunch. San Francisco, California. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
  4. ^ a b c d Geron, Tomio (June 24, 2013). "The Return Of The Anonymous Social Web". Forbes. New York, New York. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
  5. ^ Gannes, Liz (September 5, 2013). "Why Should You Care About Whisper, the Secret-Sharing App That VCs Are Pouring Money Into?". All Things D. San Francisco, California. Retrieved December 28, 2013.
  6. ^ Shontell, Alyson (May 4, 2015). "After Passing 10 Million Monthly Active Users, Whisper Hires Its First President". TechCrunch. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
  7. ^ Reimold, Dan (March 22, 2013). "Students 'Whisper' secrets on popular mobile app". USA Today. Tysons Corner, Virginia. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
  8. ^ Tsukayama, Hayley (May 25, 2013). "Whisper lets you anonymously share your deepest secrets". The Washington Post. Washington, D.C. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
  9. ^ "Secret Lives Of College Students: Anonymous Posts Shared By Whisper Users". Huffington Post. New York, New York. August 23, 2012. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
  10. ^ Bertoni, Steven; et al. (January 6, 2013). "Forbes' Top 30 under 30 in Technology". Forbes. New York, New York. Retrieved January 6, 2013.
  11. ^ Shontell, Alyson (December 16, 2013). "Secret-Sharing App Whisper Is Nearing 3 Billion Monthly Pageviews Because It Does Something Facebook Can't". Business Insider. New York, New York. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
  12. ^ Shontell, Alyson (May 4, 2015). "After Passing 10 Million Monthly Active Users, Whisper Hires Its First President". TechCrunch. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
  13. ^ O'Brien, Sara Ashley (December 11, 2015). "20 million people are sharing secrets on this app". CNN Money. New York, NY. Retrieved January 3, 2016.
  14. ^ Flynn, Kerry (December 11, 2015). "Whisper App Hits 20 Million Monthly Users, Doubles Over Six Months In 2015". International Business Times. New York, NY. Retrieved January 3, 2016.
  15. ^ Collier Cool, Lisa (September 4, 2013). "The Technology That Increases the Risk of Cyberbullying". Yahoo Health. Sunnyvale, CA. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
  16. ^ Fox, Zoe (October 31, 2013). "Is Anonymous Social Media the Answer to Cyberbullying?". Mashable. Palo Alto, CA. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
  17. ^ Gannes, Liz (August 2, 2013). "I'm So Over Oversharing: On Making Our Digital Lives More Real". All Things D. San Francisco, CA. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
  18. ^ Knibbs, Kate (December 17, 2013). "What you need to know about Whisper, the Snapchat for your secrets". The Daily Dot. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
  19. ^ Dickey, Megan Rose (September 5, 2013). "VCs Bet $21 Million That You'll Want To Start Sharing Stuff Online Anonymously". Business Insider. New York, NY. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
  20. ^ Farrell, Mackenzie (November 1, 2013). "Whisper App: Anonymity Prevention of Cyber Bullying". SMU SMC. New York, NY. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
  21. ^ "Frightened Iraqis take to anonymous app". CNN. Washington D.C. June 16, 2014. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  22. ^ Rusch, Michael (June 16, 2014). "Iraqis Take To Whisper After Government Blocks Most Social Networks". BuzzFeed. New York. Retrieved June 16, 2014.
  23. ^ "Inaka - What We do: Whisper". Inaka. Retrieved August 19, 2014.
  24. ^ "Inaka Founder Talks Argentina, Agile and Lean". Boundary. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
  25. ^ "Case Study: Inaka deploys Boundary to monitor its Amazon Cloud and Storm On Demand servers". Boundary.
  26. ^ "The story of Whisper - How the largest anonymous social network in the iTunes app store was built in Erlang". Erlang Solutions.
  27. ^ "The state of Silicon Beach and tech in Los Angeles (#AT30)". Southern California Public Radio. May 28, 2015. Retrieved October 18, 2015.
  28. ^ a b Malik, Om (July 31, 2013). "Rumor Says: Whisper, the anonymity mobile service raising big money, valued at $100M". GigaOM. San Francisco, California. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
  29. ^ Stone, Madeline (April 3, 2014). "Whisper Is Supposedly Moving Into Anjelica Huston's $11 Million Venice 'Fortress'". Business Insider. New York, New York. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
  30. ^ Griffith, Erin (April 4, 2013). "Lightspeed invests $3 million in Whisper, the "secrets" app with Snapchat-like adoption". PandoDaily. San Francisco. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
  31. ^ Lawler, Ryan (September 4, 2013). "Secret-Sharing App Whisper Snags $21 Million From Sequoia, Adds Roelof Botha To Its Board". TechCrunch. San Francisco, CA. Retrieved December 17, 2013.
  32. ^ Griffin, Tessa (November 8, 2013). "PitchBook's Friday 5: What Is The Next Social Platform IPO?". Pitchbook. Seattle, Washington. Retrieved December 23, 2013.
  33. ^ Lawler, Ryan (May 19, 2014). "Whisper Confirms $36M In New Funding, Adds Related Posts, Categories, And Explore Feature To App". TechCrunch. San Francisco, California. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
  34. ^ "Whisper company profile". CrunchBase. San Francisco, California. May 19, 2014. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
  35. ^ Heine, Christopher (September 14, 2015). "Here's How Social App Whisper Has Quietly Become a Marketing Force". Adweek. New York, New York. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
  36. ^ Dave, Paresh (April 30, 2015). "Whisper, app with 10 million young users, attracting advertisers". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, California. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
  37. ^ Jarvey, Natalie (September 1, 2015). "Whisper Hires Entertainment Veteran to Lead Sales Efforts (Exclusive)". The Hollywood Reporter. Los Angeles, California. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
  38. ^ Heine, Christopher (September 3, 2015). "Coke Tests Whisper's Advertising Potential in the Most Perfect Way". Adweek. New York, New York. Retrieved September 21, 2015.
  39. ^ Johnson, Lauren (December 4, 2015). "Hollywood Is Getting Stealthier at Advertising With Mobile Messaging Apps: Disney/Pixar's Whisper campaign shows potential". Adweek. New York, NY. Retrieved January 3, 2016.
  40. ^ Brooks, Clark. "Whisper: Are You Really Anonymous?". Illinois: Photo News.
  41. ^ http://www.wcvb.com/news/police-teenage-girl-made-columbine-threat-to-school/33276352 Teenage Girl Makes Columbine Threat to School
  42. ^ "Whisper Privacy Policy". Whisper. Los Angeles, CA. October 13, 2014. Retrieved November 2, 2014.
  43. ^ Greenberg, Andy (May 14, 2014). "Whistleblowers Beware: Apps Like Whisper and Secret Will Rat You Out". Wired. Condé Nast. Retrieved February 16, 2016.
  44. ^ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/16/-sp-revealed-whisper-app-tracking-users
  45. ^ http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/oct/17/-sp-whisper-tracking-location-users-facts-response
  46. ^ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/16/-sp-whisper-privacy-policy-terms-of-service
  47. ^ Hill, Kashmir (October 30, 2014). "This Is The Suicide Info Whisper Gave To The Department Of Defense". Forbes. New York, NY. Retrieved November 2, 2014.
  48. ^ Heyward, Michael (October 18, 2014). "What Whisper Is All About". Medium. Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved October 25, 2014.
  49. ^ Heyward, Michael (October 24, 2013). "Setting The Record Straight" (PDF). AmazonAWS. Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved October 25, 2013.
  50. ^ a b c Hern, Alex (October 17, 2014). "Twitter's former security head condemns Whisper's privacy flaws". The Guardian. Retrieved February 16, 2016.
  51. ^ Rockefeller, Jay (October 22, 2014). "Letter from Sen. Rockefeller to Whisper CEO". United States Senate, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation. Archived from the original (PDF) on December 6, 2014.
  52. ^ Lewis, Paul, and Rushe, Dominic (October 23, 2014). "Top senator demands explanation from Whisper after user tracking revelations". The Guardian (Manchester, England). Buzzfeed, the Huffington Post and Fusion have suspended their pre-existing partnerships with Whisper in the wake of the Guardian's revelations.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  53. ^ "Corrections and clarifications: Whisper – a clarification". The Guardian. London, UK. March 11, 2015. Retrieved March 16, 2015.
  54. ^ Bright, Peter (March 11, 2015). "Guardian backtracks, says Whisper doesn't spy on its users after all". Ars Technica. New York, NY. Retrieved March 16, 2015.
  55. ^ Dwoskin, Elizabeth (March 11, 2015). "Guardian Backpedals on Whisper App Privacy Violations". The Wall Street Journal. New York, NY. Retrieved March 16, 2015.
  56. ^ Kludt, Tom (March 12, 2015). "Guardian issues 'clarification' on Whisper bombshells". CNN Money. New York, NY. Retrieved March 16, 2015.
  57. ^ Ha, Anthony (March 11, 2015). "The Guardian Publishes A Pretty Amazing Whisper "Clarification"". TechCrunch. San Francisco, CA. Retrieved March 16, 2015.
  58. ^ Bell, Karissa (March 11, 2015). "The Guardian backtracks privacy allegations against Whisper". Mashable. New York, NY. Retrieved March 16, 2015.
  59. ^ ""A confederacy of 'privacy' dunces": What we found under the hood of an 'anonymous' chat app used by millions". Xipiter. March 22, 2015. Retrieved March 24, 2015.
  60. ^ a b Julie Bort (March 23, 2015). "Inside the 'bizarre' public fight anonymous app Whisper is having with a security startup". Business Insider. Retrieved March 24, 2015.
  61. ^ "About Us". Your Voice. Los Angeles, CA. Retrieved December 29, 2013.
  62. ^ "Your Voice". Whisper Text LLC. Retrieved January 16, 2014.
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