While both of these events impact people in the Bitcoin community in different ways, none of them got our team down more than a quote in an article about the Gliph Marketplace published yesterday.

In an article titled, Gliph Uses In-App Messaging, Bitcoin to Take On Craigslist, a quote was used that suggested the only reason we have been focused on Bitcoin is because investors like it. This quote was at best taken of the context it was used and simply can not be further from the truth. We’ve asked for it to be retracted.

Gliph’s roots are in protecting the privacy and communications of its users. We reached the idea of integrating Bitcoin because it provides private, secure and frictionless payments. We came to this conclusion long before Apple Pay existed and before the first dollar of investment from Bitcoin supporters went into the company.

We built Gliph Marketplace to specifically leverage Bitcoin, and believe that the global impact of having a great way to perform P2P transactions using the currency will be large. We believe this is particularly true in countries like the Philippines, where many people are unbanked or do not have access to traditional payment systems.

We also acknowledge that the Bitcoin currency is still in the early adopter days, and in some regions may not be as popular for general transactions as quickly as other digital payment methods.

For example, in the United States, Apple Pay has significant adoption advantages over Bitcoin. It has major retailers accepting it, along with direct integration into popular Apple products using Touch ID. As a result, Apple Pay is likely to gain traction in regular transactions more quickly than Bitcoin.

But Apple Pay’s potential does not minimize our belief in Bitcoin. We believe in Bitcoin. Not as a way to gain investment, but as something that is important to the world. We believe it will impact many lives and help rebalance global financial systems. We believe our products can make it easier to use and more common way to perform Bitcoin-based transactions.

Gliph’s CEO and co-founder has spoken out about the promise of Bitcoin and its impact regularly. Here are few videos that better express how and why we believe in Bitcoin:

• On the Future of Bitcoin (Interview given at Bitcoin 2013, first US Tradeshow for Bitcoin, May 2013)
• How Bitcoin is Being Used (Lecture given at Draper University of Heroes, February 2014)
• Privacy, Identity, and Innovation and Bitcoin (Panel given at Pii2014, December 2014)

Finally, given how early Bitcoin is, we believe Bitcoin users, builders and supporters are courageous and intrepid. We appreciate all of our Bitcoin users who have taken the time to try Gliph and provide feedback on how it can be improved.

We’ll keep listening and enthusiastically advocating for Bitcoin.

A variety of companies and publications have released new articles or information to mark the day. Microsoft released results of a new survey of 1,000 US adults that shows privacy is becoming more important to people, yet a sense of powerlessness pervades.

In the key findings of the report, 45% of people feel they have little or no control over personal information gathered by companies about them. Below is a graphic that shows how much control people feel they have over personal information shared online:

The circles on the graph indicate that men feel less in control over privacy than women while young people and those making incomes less than $50k a year have the strongest sense of control.

The Huffington Post has published an article marking the day and efforts to urge the US Congress into passing Electronic Privacy Reform. The Huffington Post article highlights the increasing disparity in privacy afforded to US citizens with regards to physical and virtual communication channels.

For example, email stored on web-based email services but used almost entirely from the home or mobile devices (like Gmail) may be obtained from US citizens without a warrant. Whereas a personal, physical letter sent to a home remain protected.

Individual choices around what personal data to keep private continue to focus on Facebook which encourages the open sharing and access to real personal data.

Facebook’s recent release of Graph Search has again highlighted concerns around the unexpected revelation of personal information. In the piece by The Nation, Ari Melber connects Graph Search to David Pozen’s paper (.pdf) in the Yale Law Journal describing the Mosaic Theory of intelligence gathering, where seemingly insignificant pieces of information can be assembled into a useable piece of intelligence on a person.

Unintentional sharing of personal data continues to be a problem, with the Online Trust Alliance announcement today that 242.6 million personal records were exposed in 2012. In their 2013 report on Data Protection and Data, they find that of 1478 breaches in 2012, over one-quarter were due to “internal incidents,” meaning personal data was revealed by members of the organization entrusted with personal data, rather than criminal mischief of those outside organizations.

Gliph is proud to be on the forefront of providing privacy not only around personal data, but also in building a system for communication and connection that offers real privacy.

In the Gliph company blog, we previously covered the efforts of the NTIA’s Privacy Multistakeholder Meetings that are aimed at realizing the Obama Administration’s Privacy Bill of Rights. We’ve also shared ideas for how startup companies can make privacy a strategic asset.

Some functional highlights from 2012 that added privacy to Gliph included the ability for users to securely delete Gliph messages, the release of Cloaked Email and an app access PIN to prevent casual snooping of Gliph conversations.  We have some terrific additions that add additional opportunities to maintain privacy planned for 2013 and look forward to sharing them with you.

We urge everyone to take a moment today to consider what personal data they have currently available on the interent and thoughtfully consider actions they need to take in 2013 to take control of their privacy online.

• Forrester Research – The 2012 Consumer Security Market Landscape: Key Dynamics and Growth Opportunities. (Our Blog Entry on this coverage)
• BestVPNz – Gliph App Review
• Marketplace – Top 10 ways to avoid being tracked online (Cloaked Email came in at #7!)
• Plazor – 22 iPhone Apps That Spies Would (Actually) Use
• Plazor – Gliph App Review
• Business Insider – 12 Quirky Apps That Will Put The Fun Back Into Using Your Smartphone
• Business Insider – 10 Awesome Apps To Protect Your Smartphone
• Techacker – Use Craigslist? You should use Gliph cloaked emails too
• Business Insider – 13 Underrated Apps You Need To Download Right Now
• MakeUseOf – How To Disguise Your Email Address Using Gliph Mobile App
• BuzzPatrol – Gliph Gives You Disposable Email Addresses So You Can Stay Anonymous
• ITPortal –  Gliph app provides disposable, anonymous email addresses
• Lifehacker – Gliph Creates Disposable Email Addresses for Private Messages and Encrypted Chats
• Textually – Gliph App Creates Anonymous, Disposable Email Addresses
• DoobyBrain – Get a cloaked email address with Gliph for Free
• Geek News Central – Create a One Time Email Using Gli.ph
• Mac|Life – Gliph App Aims to Increase Your Personal Privacy
• Media Bistro – Gliph Lets You Create Create Anonymous, Disposable Email Addresses 
• TUAW – Gliph launches new Cloaked Email service that’ll hide your real email address from prying eyes
• PC Magazine – Gliph Provides Disposable, Anonymous Email Addresses
• Read Write Web – Use this app to create anonymous disposable email addresses
• BostonInno – Gliph Launches New Feature To Keep Users’ Actual Email Addresses Far Away From Craigslist
• Tech.li – Gliph: Turn Your Digital Identity Into An Ice Cream Cone
• Privacy Identity Innovation (PII2012) – Gliph Wins Innovator’s Choice Award

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

• Attualissimo – Gliph, creare indirizzi email ‘usa e getta’ e chat crittografate
• MacDigger – Gliph для iPhone и Android позволяет создавать анонимные одноразовые почтовые ящики
• Fr@ctal – Mexico Televisa’s Cable Television Technology Show (video)
• Paseban – Lindungi Email Anda Dari Para Spammer Menggunakan Layanan Email Gliph Ini
• IPhoneclub – WhatsApp-alternatief Gliph zet privacy op de eerste plaats
• Info Exame – Os 10 apps mais legais da semana
• Elandroide libre –  Correo y mensajería encriptada y segura para Android con Gliph 

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 the higher-security communications and in-person key exchange would be reinforced by Gliph’s award-winning PIN-based app access and LockDown Privacy Protection. Sources can, if necessary, masque their identities thanks to Gliph’s symbol-based pseudonym usernames and articulated privacy settings.

Our team seeks to offer all of our users client-side cryptography and is excited about the potential for accelerating its release in Gliph’s roadmap.

Gliph’s project proposal was among the top 50 of over 500 proposals submitted to the challenge. We’d like to thank the Knight Foundation for considering our project, and its efforts to improve the state of mobile technology for the media. Here are a few other semi-finalists we think Gliph users might also be interested in:

• Escape Velocity: P2P Distributed Publishing by Dan Schultz
• Is this for real? Validating and Authenticating Mobile Media by Guardian Project
• mActivist-in-a-Box: Distributed, Secure, Bottom-Up Mobile Data Collection by Chris Spence

The Knight News Challenge was created to speed up innovation by providing financial and PR resources to the best ideas in news and information. The goal of the Knight Foundation is to “support transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts.”