Wait, Amazon has a messaging app? Amazon’s encrypted chat platform, Wickr Me, stopped accepting new users on December 31, 2022 and is scheduled to fully shut down on December 31st of this year, based on an official company announcement. The decision was first announced in November following several controversies surrounding its high security. This allowed users to sign up without a phone number or other identifying information, making it a pinata party for security-minded groups such as hackers and other criminals.
The Wickr-man
Last June, NBC Newsrevealed that Wickr Me had become a go-to product for many people trading child sexual abuse material. NBC’s investigation identified around 72 court cases from the past 5 years in which the defendant used the platform to trade in the aforementioned illegal material. At the time, law enforcement officials and a representative of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children told NBC News that Wickr Me had subpar abilities in safeguarding against the trading of such material on its platform.
In the same month, an Amazon Web Services spokesperson said: “Amazon is committed to preventing child sexual abuse material (CSAM) in every segment of our business, including Wickr, which maintains strict Terms of Use that clearly prohibit illegal activity. We act quickly on reports of illegal behavior, respond immediately to requests from law enforcement, and take the appropriate actions. Anyone found to be in violation of our terms is subject to account termination. Wickr absolutely responds appropriately to, and cooperates with, law enforcement on these critical matters.”
In a separate statement in November, Amazon explained that it was scuttling Wickr Me to devote more of its resources toward its business-to-business products, AWS Wickr, and Wickr Enterprise. The statement had no mention of Amazon’s dealing with government agencies, including the Department of Defense and Homeland Security. NBC News tried creating a test account on January 1, only to be met with a pop-up saying: “Wickr Me will not support new users starting 31-Dec-2022. Wickr Me will be unavailable after 31-Dec-2023.”
Wickr was founded in 2012 and functioned mainly as a high-level encryption messaging service. By 2015, the company had raised $39 million in funding, being reported within the same year, by various sources, that it was being used by members of the Islamic State terrorist organization as a recruitment channel. The first successful prosecution against the trading of child pornography on the app came shortly after in 2016. Wickr was then acquired by Amazon in 2021
The Wrap
Wickr Me’s dilemma isn’t much different from what Meta’s full-range E2E encryption push also struggles against. While it does make private messaging all the more secure, the individual benefits pale in comparison to the wider implications and challenges posed by high-end encryption. It has been debated that it’ll make it harder for law enforcement to counter criminals and other foul actors who are looking to use encrypted channels to further their agendas. It’s unlikely that Amazon will reverse its decision, so for those who still have their Wickr accounts, it’s best to start migrating any stuff that you would like to save before the servers go dark come this December.
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