Sylk Mobile
Secure real-time mobile communications
Internet communications privacy is important to users, and there is a limited set of encrypted multiparty audio and videoconferencing solutions available to consumers and businesses today. The market, predominantly occupied by proprietary services that often require risky plugins, lack introspection and transparency, proved to expose users to significant security and privacy issues. This trend must be counteracted by better open source equivalents. Sylk Mobile provides a multi-party video encrypted conferencing solution mean to run on an end user computer or a mobile device. It is based on the WebRTC standard, and has a focus on user privacy and easy of use.
- The project's own website: http://sylkserver.com
Why does this actually matter to end users?
One of the things people enjoy the most about the internet, is that it enables them to talk to others remotely almost without limit. Internet allows anyone to keep closely connected with friends and family, and help their kids solve a math problem while they are at work. People collaborate with their colleagues from the couch of their living room, the cafe where they enjoy lunch or on their cell phone on the bus to the gym. Businesses can easily service their customers where this is most convenient to them, without having to travel themselves. This is so convenient, that some businesses have already moved entirely online. Internet communication has become the nerve center of whole neighbourhoods, where people watch over the possessions of their neighbours while these are away for work or leisure.
However, users have a hard time to understand how privacy is impacted if they use the wrong technology. Because internet works almost everywhere, the natural privacy protection of the walls of a house, a school or an office is gone. Unlike the traditional phone companies, many of the large technology providers run their business not on delivering an honest service but on secretly eavesdropping on their users and selling information to others. It is mostly not about what you say, so it is relatively easy for providers to allow some form of privacy by encrypting messages. The more interesting parts are who talks to whom, when, and where they are in the real world while they meet on the internet. if you want to be reachable across the internet, you have to constantly let the communication provider follow you wherever you go. This makes the private and professional lives of citizens an open book to companies that with the help of AI and other technologies make billions from selling 'hidden data' normal people are completely unaware of even exists. And of course in societies that are not so democratic, this type of information is critical to bring down opposition and stifle human rights.
Users assume the confidentiality and privacy when they communicate, and they are morally justified to do so. There is nothing natural or final about internet communication providers having access to all this very personal information - or going down the dark path of selling data about customers. The cost of this in terms of internet usage and computer power needed is actually negligible, and so all it takes it the availability of open alternatives that people can use. Sylk is clearly one part of the puzzle: it is a mature open source videoconferencing tool that anyone can install anywhere for free. Businesses like the internet provider or the IT company around the corner can run it for their customers, and individuals can run it themselves from their home. And by switching, people can regain their privacy and make communicating via the internet as secure and confidential as we all need it to be. This project extends the unique and user-centric features of Sylk to smartphones and other mobile devices, offering an important private and trustworthy alternative to other videochat and instant messaging apps.
Run by AG Projects B.V.
This project was funded through the NGI0 PET Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant agreement No 825310.
