When Edward Snowden revealed to the full extent what the NSA were up to last year, people started talking about the need for a more secure alternative to Skype. This started a relatively new project made up of programmers who frequent 4Chan and Reddit are working on an open source, security-focused Skype replacement.
The project is called Tox, and is yet another example of programmers uniting in the post-Snowden era to make easy-to-use tools with encryption and privacy considerations built-in.
“Nowadays, every government seems to be interested in what we’re saying online. Tox is built on a ‘privacy goes first’ agenda, and we make no compromises. Your safety is our top priority, and there isn’t anything in the world that will change that,” states the Tox website. The team will also hire a security firm to test the encryption to ensure it is secure.
The Tox team is focused on building a Skype replacement, the main thing they’re trying to do, besides provide encryption, is create a tool that requires no central servers whatsoever . It relies on the same technology that BitTorrent uses to provide direct connections between users, so there’s no central hub to snoop on or take down.
