Category Archives: Gliph News

Gliph’s Responsible Disclosure Program

Lost among the multitude of announcements and happenings for Gliph this past weekend was the introduction of our Responsible Disclosure Program.

As a platform focused on providing security and privacy, it is important that we involve everyone willing to help us keep the Gliph community safe. We created a page to officially describe our Responsible Disclosure Program for whitehats and announced the first contribution from a security researcher.

Anand Prakash, (@sehacure) a student at Vellore Institute of Technology in kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu, India has proved a helpful early contributing security researcher to Gliph. We would like to thank him for his work.

If you are a security researcher, we encourage you to check out the program and reach out to us if you have any questions or feedback. You can reach us at security at gli dot ph.

Announcing Simple Bitcoin Payments with Gliph

Bitcoin P2P payments on GliphWe are proud to announce that Gliph now supports simple peer-to-peer (P2P) mobile payments using Bitcoin digital currency. You can now send Bitcoin with other Gliph users using updated versions of our iPhone, Android and web applications.

We have an iOS demo video up if you’re hungry to see how it works.  Also a step-by-step guide to setting it up for Android and for iOS. But this is more than just a new feature for us and we wanted to go into detail as to why we’re adding Bitcoin to the Gliph platform.

Over the past several months the Gliph team has been fascinated by Bitcoin. Bitcoin brings privacy to payments that is unavailable with traditional banking. The software behind Bitcoin is open source and has sustained great scrutiny. The currency itself is distributed, and transfers can take place with little or no fees at all. We love that no one company or government controls Bitcoin, and that even its creator(s) are shrouded in anonymity.

We believe Bitcoin and the ideas behind it have the power to change the world.

But when our team began using Bitcoin every day, we noticed some rough patches. Getting started can be confusing. If you were able to get a wallet set up, it was easy to get stuck asking “what next?” If you wanted to send Bitcoin to a friend, you had to awkwardly copy and paste long wallet addresses into tiny form fields. Existing solutions, even from biggest players, felt too technical and took the fun out of using this amazing new currency. Continue reading →

Gliph Joins Boost VC Startup Accelerator

Gliph joins Boost VC Startup AcceleratorWe are happy to announce that Gliph has joined the Boost VC startup accelerator. Gliph will join around a dozen other companies in a business incubation that includes mentorship, seed capital and a heavy focus on product development.

Beginning late June, Gliph’s founders (Rob and Nick) will relocate to Boost’s provided housing and office space in San Mateo, California. There we will join a group of startups specifically focused on the Bitcoin digital currency. The team will be working throughout the summer to refine the Gliph experience and further integrate Bitcoin into Gliph’s digital identity platform.

We chose Boost because founders Adam Draper and Brayton Williams have shown themselves to be early advocates for the Bitcoin currency. They’ve also put together a stellar program for startups that is a great fit for Gliph’s stage as a company. Continue reading →

Gliph is Now Accepting Bitcoin Payments

We’re pleased to share that we now accept Bitcoin as a payment method for Gliph products, in addition to In-App Purchases (IAP) and traditional credit cards. Today, that means you can purchase additional Cloaked Email addresses, and add upgrades to your account using Bitcoin.

What is Bitcoin?
Bitcoin is a new kind of money that is decentralized and not controlled by a single organization or government. You can send Bitcoins to other people and businesses around the globe without going through a bank. This means Bitcoin can be used in any country, and fees for sending the currency are very low.

Why did you decide to take Bitcoin?
Many of our users are privacy and security conscious folks and we have had requests for the company to take payment over Bitcoin since we launched Cloaked Email Pro. We also appreciate the following aspects of the Bitcoin currency:

  • Privacy – While Bitcoin was not designed for anonymity, it can be used in a way that abstracts transactions away from identity.
  • Security – Bitcoin uses mathematics to allow the network to create Bitcoins and validate transactions. The currency itself is not controlled by any particular institution.
  • Trust – You don’t need to trust anyone other than yourself and the person you’re sending money to. No one can get in the way of your transactions.

How do I pay Gliph with Bitcoin? Continue reading →

Gliph Opposes CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act

At Gliph, we take a conservative view toward user privacy. Gliph’s privacy policy is clear: a Gliph user’s Facet information belongs to them and remains under their control. Gliph offers specific features that give users privacy in their personal communications.

Like many internet companies, Gliph is based in the United States and is governed by the laws of this country. Gliph respects the United States’ need to maintain national security. However, Gliph opposes CISPA as proposed because the legislation conflates cybersecurity with surveillance and information sharing. CISPA significantly erodes the privacy of internet users.

What is CISPA?
At the time of this writing, CISPA is H.R. 624, (web, pdf), the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. CISPA is just a bill, which is a proposed piece of legislation that has the potential to become a federal law in the United States.

CISPA’s purpose is to help the United States investigate cyber threats and ensure the security of networks against cyber attacks. The bill aims to add legal framework for the sharing of information between private companies and the United States government.

Why Oppose CISPA?
Gliph appreciates the pressing global context around cybersecurity, yet is adamant about the preservation of civil liberty and personal privacy. We are joining the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Internet Defense League in our opposition to this bill. You can learn about the below bulleted issues and more in the EFF’s page about the bill.

Here are some of the key issues with CISPA Gliph is concerned about: Continue reading →

Gliph 2012 Press and Industry Recognition in Review

Gliph was blessed to get coverage from publications small and large over the course of the year. We appreciated the attention! Here’s a look at a portion of the coverage in roughly reverse chronological order (newest first):

Internationally, Gliph was recognized in a variety of countries and publications or media. Here is a partial list:

Gliph had a few notable social media mentions we wanted to share as well:
We had a lot of great mentions from our users on Twitter and Facebook as well. We tried to retweet folks as much as we could. If you wrote about Gliph and don’t see your blog entry or post above, please email us and we’ll add it to the list. support@gli.ph.
We’d like to thank everyone who had a hand in sharing Gliph by cable television, the web, or just by mentioning it to a friend in passing. Have a Happy New Year!

Gliph’s Bottom Line

Our goals are to help you protect your privacy and give you control over your personal data. Our team has worked to demonstrate our dedication to these goals by building and releasing free tools like LockDown Privacy Protection and secure picture messaging.

Nick and myself, the founders of the company, aspire for Gliph to become the world’s most trusted identity provider. As an important step of building trust with you and other Gliph users, we want to share how Gliph will operate as a sustainable business. Continue reading →

Knight Foundation Selects Gliph as Semi-finalist for News Challenge: Mobile

Gliph Selected by Knight Foundation for Semi-finalsWe’re pleased to share that the Knight Foundation has selected Gliph’s Secure Communication Tools for Investigative Journalists project as a semi-finalist in News Challenge: Mobile.

Gliph’s proposal is to build a mobile app for secure communication between journalists and their sources. The project lets investigative journalists easily exchange cryptography keys with someone during an in-person meeting, then protect continued text communication using client-side encryption.

You can read additional details of the proposal on Knight’s website.

The benefit of this project is increased trust between journalists and sources. It gives them a simple and secure way to share sensitive information discretely. The reason this would be awesome for journalists is that Continue reading →

Gliph Featured on Mexico’s Televisa Fr@tal Technology Program

Gliph was featured on Televisa’s FOROtv Fr@tal television show. Fractal is “a television blog with information for young people, addressing the latest news on technology, environment, art, gadgets, design and all the news you can find on the net.”

We’ve already heard from a number of new folks who learned about Gliph from seeing the show in Mexico City and beyond. Bienvenidos a Gliph y gracias por su consideración! This news comes on the heals of our initial outreach to Gliph users around the world.

Redesigned Gliph for Mobile Web

Today we’re announcing the availability of the completely redesigned Gliph mobile web application.  In this entry I’m going to go over the advances we’ve made and briefly why mobile web is important to the future of Gliph.

A Bit of History
When Gliph first debuted it was a mobile web application (website) and that’s it.  We worked on it during the winter of 2011 and put our first version online around the start of January.  At the time, it only worked in Mobile Safari and was barely a proof of concept.

Continue reading →