Delivery of email sent to Cloaked Email addresses will stop at 8am PST on May 5th, 2015.

Some Background
When it launched, we built Cloaked Email primarily as a way to offer greater privacy in performing Craigslist transactions. The service was so successful that Craigslist released an “email privacy gateway” only months after Cloaked Email’s debut. We believe Cloaked Email pushed Craigslist to take user privacy more seriously.

Many people, including our team continue to use Cloaked Email to offer a layer of privacy between themselves and websites and services across the internet. We recognize it is a valuable service for some people today.

Gliph has evolved from simply providing general privacy tools to offering privacy around performing transactions. With the release of Gliph Marketplace and Deal Flow, we’ve removed email completely from negotiating P2P deals without sacrificing privacy.

To allow our team to focus on the future, we’re ending support for Cloaked Email.

How to Migrate Away from Cloaked Email

1. Visit the email account you use in conjunction with Cloaked Email.
2. Search your email for “cloak.gli.ph”
3. Note the individuals or services you’ve received email from using a cloak.
4. Log into the service you’ve used Cloaked Email with and change your email address to a new one.

Alternatives to Cloaked Email
Create Privacy Email Address on a Free Email Provider
Create a new Gmail address and use it exclusively for sites you don’t want to know your real name or your primary inbox. Hook this up to your “All” inbox on your smartphone for conveneint reception.

Use Abine’s “Masking” tool 
Abine is a company entirely focused on providing privacy around email and other forms data. They support a product very similar to Cloaked Email.

Today marks an important expansion of Gliph with the release of Gliph Marketplace: a new way to buy and sell locally using cash and the Bitcoin digital currency.

Our team has brought together secure messaging, transaction workflow and digital payments into an awesome new P2P transaction experience we call Deal Flow.

• Deal Flow helps you stay focused on completing a deal by integrating messaging and useful push notifications into the buying and selling experience. Gliph Marketplace has privacy built-in eliminating the distraction of “burner” phone numbers and “email gateways.”
• Deal Flow saves you time with intuitive listing status updates. For example, when someone is ready to buy something from you, the status moves from “Q&A” to “Offer Submitted.” Deal status updates ensure you have the most recent information so you can make the best decision with your time.
• Deal Flow earns you money faster by making digital payments an integrated part of the Gliph Marketplace experience. Once you’ve accepted an offer, paying for the item using Bitcoin is handled in a single tap.

You can view a complete video demo of Gliph Marketplace and Deal Flow here:

Gliph Marketplace Deal Flow on Android

Initial Release
Gliph Marketplace and Deal Flow are initially available on Gliph’s Android and mobile web applications. Desktop Web and iPhone versions are coming soon.

While waiting for the iOS update, iPhone users may visit https://gli.ph/m in mobile Safari to start using Gliph marketplace now.

Items available in Gliph Marketplace (like this Playstation 4) may be viewed on the Desktop Web right now.

Becoming a Seller in Gliph Marketplace
At the onset of Gliph Marketplace, our team is personally interviewing and approving every seller on the platform. You can apply to become a seller using this form.

We’re also reviewing each new listing prior to publishing in Gliph Marketplace because:

1. We want to make improvements on Gliph Marketplace as quickly as possible. We can gather feedback and respond to it faster by limiting how many sellers are using the system at first.
2. Gliph Marketplace is not a dark market. It is intended to be well-lit and safe place to buy and sell stuff. Especially at the beginning, we want to make sure people’s first experiences are good ones.

One of the results of this will limit the selection of items available in the Marketplace at first. So if you don’t see something you like nearby please be patient. :)

We are planning to approve new sellers regularly.  At first, we are focused on people in the San Francisco, New York City and Portland, Oregon regions. However, we’re looking for people who are knowledgeable about Bitcoin and are happy to accept it as an alternative to cash so please apply regardless of your location. We encourage you to apply.

Conclusion
We are very excited to be bringing this product to market today. It represents a culmination of creative ideas, privacy, technology and embrace of Bitcoin that our entire team is proud of.

We acknowledge we have a lot left to do and over the coming weeks we will be working hard to bring the remaining clients online, add or improve features and find and fix issues. Thank you for your support and feedback! Hit us up at username ‘support’ or at our support email address support at gli.ph.

If you receive unwanted contact on Gliph, this new option allows you to remove your connection with them and prevent a new connection from being created.

This means your existing conversation with the opposing user will be permanently deleted and you will no longer receive notification of direct messages from them. You also will not be able to send direct messages to them.

How to Block and Unblock People on Gliph
Blocking someone is pretty easy, and can be done using Gliph’s web application. Start by logging in to the Gliph mobile or desktop app. Then visit the profile page of the person you want to block.

You can access someone’s profile page by clicking or tapping on their Profile Photo in any conversation.

Blocking Users and Group Conversations
Blocking another Gliph user will not silence them if you are both in the same Group conversation. If someone is giving you grief in a group conversation, we recommend the group admin set the group to Closed and kick the user from the group. This will prevent them from re-joining.

Gliph’s Terms of Service already do not allow harassment of other users. However, we realize people may want immediate and direct resolution to unwanted communication. This new feature is our first step toward providing this.

Introduction Section

Changed: “Your Privacy is our Mission” to “Introduction”
Reason: We felt this was too splashy. This document is an outline of privacy considerations for Gliph users.

Removed: “Your Facet information is, by default, kept private.”
Reason: Many users have given us feedback that it is too confusing to see people as Gliph’s only. In our own use of Gliph, we notice that in the great majority of cases, people do want to be seen as either their First Name or Pseudonym, rather than a symbol-based username. It is just much easier to recognize who is who.

For this reason, during sign-up and while editing profile we will set certain facets to Public by default if we feel it dramatically improves the overall Gliph experience. We will still provide you the option to set them to Private before they are saved the first time, or at any time after initial setup.

Removed: “We provide the platform; you have the control.”
Reason: We don’t feel like this adds information to the privacy policy.

Changed: “How safe is your information on Gliph? We encrypt all of your Facet information and Gliph messages using the AES-256 cryptography algorithm and a private key generated from your secret password. The AES-256 encryption algorithm is the only one approved by the National Security Agency (NSA) for transmitting information classified as Top Secret. [NSA Suite B Cryptography]”

to:

“We encrypt all private Facet information and Gliph messages using the AES-256 cryptography algorithm and a key generated from your secret password. ”

Reason:  We believe when used properly, AES-256 is a solid cryptography algorithm to protect information. However, revelations around the NSA’s surveillance program degraded trust in the agency and therefore we do not wish to highlight their approval of the algorithm in our Privacy Policy.

Since we’re discussing this passage, we also want to share more information about  how personal data is protected in Gliph.

First some terminology:

• Facet – A piece personal information saved in your Gliph account like your First Name or Phone Number. You choose the privacy and discoverability settings on each of your Facets and you can choose to share a Facet with other Gliph users.

• Private Facet – A Facet that is only displayed to other Gliph connections or Groups you have explicitlychosen to share them with.
• Discoverable Facet – A Facet that is not in open display to the public, but may be discovered and associated with your Gliph account if someone knows to search for it.
• Public Facet – A Facet that may be openly displayed to anyone on the Internet visiting your Gliph profile or to a logged-in Gliph user that views your profile.
• Account Facet – A Facet that is accessible to Gliph’s system (and administrators), but not other users unless explicitly shared, set to Public or Discoverable. Current Account Facets are your personal gliph and your email address.

Saying something is encrypted does not necessarily mean it is being stored securely. Here are some more details about the security you can expect from these different privacy settings:

• Private Facets are encrypted and may only be decrypted in conjunction with a key generated from your secret password. You may enforce complete privacy from Gliph administrators via an optional setting that removes the ability to reset the password on your account. (See our blog on Lockdown Privacy Protection).
• Discoverable, Private Facets are encrypted but also hashed. If Gliph’s database was compromised, Facets with this setting may be less secure than Non-Discoverable, Private Facets.
• Public Facets are encrypted, however their encryption keys are stored in plaintext. This means if Gliph’s database was compromised, these Facets would not be stored securely. The Facet content must be accessible without your password. Therefore, it is necessary for Gliph to have access to the encryption key for that Facet.
• Shared Facets are encrypted, and the Facet key is shared with the other user or users. That Facet key is then encrypted again using a connection specific key. The security of Private Facets you share depends on both you and the other party keeping your passwords secret and may be strengthened by having all parties turn on Lockdown Privacy Protection.

To summarize, Gliph not only takes measures to protect its database, it has specific additional measures to protect the data. How you use the service and interact with others will affect how securely we can protect your information.

Removed: “Please review our privacy policy below. We worked hard to make it simple and understandable and we will continue to improve upon it. Let us know if you any questions or suggestions.”
Reason: These words do not add useful information to the Privacy Policy.

Gliph Privacy Mission Statement Section

Changed:

• We do use trusted service providers (such as Mixpanel) to help provide us with information about the use of our services, but only after anonymization. Our trusted service providers cannot see your Facet information.

to:

• We do use trusted service providers to assist in sending email and to help provide us with information about the use of our services. Our trusted service providers do not have access to your private facet information. Your email address is an exception; it may be shared to assist in sending you email from Gliph.

Reason: We removed the reference to Mixpanel, because the example is likely not familiar to most people. We also changed language about how information is shared with trusted service providers:

The idea of a Trusted Third Parties may not be familiar to everyone. It is generally a service that assists Gliph in getting something done. For example, sending email is a bigger concern than it may seem. We rely on a Trusted Service Provider to help deal with delivery and spam issues.

We also removed the word “anonymization” because that word means different things to different people and is better explained under “Information We Collect” below.

Changed:

• We keep your Facet information and Gliph messages encrypted by AES-256 with a private key generated by the password only you know. The only exception is your email address.

to:

• We keep your Facet information and Gliph messages encrypted with a key generated by a password only you know.

Reason:  We cleaned up the language to clarify and avoid repetition. We removed the sentence about Email address because as clarified above, even Public Email Address Facets technically are encrypted.

Privacy Policy Section

Changed: [Last Updated Date]

Changed:

1. Information You Provide to Us
   We receive and store only the information you provide to us, including the Facet information you choose to add. Information you provide as Facet information may include your name, email address, Twitter handle, website and other information. We store your Facet information on our servers and encrypt them as described below (See “How We Protect Information”). Except for your email address, we cannot see your Facet information unless you choose to share them with us and/or make them public. You can choose not to add certain Facet information, but this may limit your ability to take advantage of certain services or features we offer.

to:

1. Information You Provide to Us
   We receive and store only the information you provide to us, including the Facet information you choose to add. Information you provide as Facet information may include your name, email address, Twitter handle, website address, profile photo, and other information. We store your Facet information on our servers and encrypt them as described below (See “How We Protect Information”). Except for your email address, we cannot see your Facet information unless you choose to share them with us and/or make them public. You can choose not to add certain Facet information, but this may limit your ability to take advantage of certain services or features we offer.

Reason: We plan on adding optional Profile Photos to Gliph, We will be treating these types of photos as Facet information.

Changed:

Other Users
Please keep in mind that any information you make public on Gliph will be accessible by other users and may be used by them. However, you control the Facet information you keep private and you decide what you choose to share with others.

to:

Other Users
Please keep in mind that any information you make public or discoverable on Gliph will be accessible by other users and may be used by them. However, you control the Facet information you keep private and you decide what you choose to share with others.

Reason: We wanted to clarify that if you set a Facet to discoverable, it may be indirectly accessible to other Gliph users. For example, if you want to be found by your friends on Facebook we must set your Facebook Facet to discoverable which will allow friends to make a connection between your Facebook identity and Gliph identity.

Changed:

How We Protect Information

We use a variety of security measures, including encryption and authentication tools to make security a priority. Your Facet information and Gliph messages are encrypted by AES-256 with a private key. Only you know your password; we do not. Besides your email, we don’t have access to your Facet information or Gliph messages.

To:

How We Protect Information

We use a variety of security measures, including encryption and authentication tools.

Reason: We shortened this paragraph because the language is unnecessarily repetitious introduction to this section.

Conclusion

These changes allow us to continue to protect personal data and communications. They also clarify language so it is accurately representing our user experience. We hope this entry has been helpful and appreciate hearing your feedback: privacy@gli.ph.

What happens to Information We Put Online?
It is hard to understand what happens to data we store online. Every text we send, every picture that is transmitted, and every person we connect with is represented by data. This data is transmitted across the Internet and ultimately saved on one or many servers and sometimes multiple devices such as smartphones, desktop computers and laptops. What happens to this data?

Social platforms commonly offer “deletion” or “removal” features that make it appear that you can permanently remove stuff you have put online. Unfortunately, these services are often misrepresenting what actually happens with information.

For example, messaging services like GroupMe and Whatsapp offer to remove messages for you. But depending on the app, your unencrypted messages are saved in a database with a flag marked deleted. Services may be built in a way that they are unable to delete the message on the other person’s phone, instead only “hide” it from your end of the conversation.

For a long time, Facebook would not actually remove photos that you had deleted from your account. Now that Facebook has fixed their system, your photos actually be will be actually deleted within 30 days. Today, you can “Delete this Photo,” however Facebook’s platform may not actually delete it for weeks.

A lot of questions have been asked about how Snapchat handles removal of data. You send a photo to someone, and it is supposed to disappear within a short period of time. However, Snapchat has made it clear that images sent over the service will persist for up to 30 days or until all recipients of the image have opened the photo. More concerning to some is that snaps are not being removed properly from smartphones and can in fact be recovered.

Update (5/8/14): Snapchat settled charges from the FTC that it misrepresented how it was handling user data collection practices.

This is a pretty big problem, since if you don’t have a background in Computer Science, you must rely on what you’re being told in the interface. If it says “Delete,” does that mean right now, forever, from everywhere?

Behind the Scenes on Message Deletion on the Gliph Platform
When we first introduced message deletion on the Gliph platform, our focus was on clarifying why Gliph deletes from both sides rather than allowing complete archiving. (Please see “Our Thinking on Message Deletion“). What follows in this entry is a more general overview of what Gliph is doing with deleted messages.

When you send a message on Gliph, it originates from either the Gliph iPhone, Android or web applications. At that time, the message is stored in a “cache” (memory) of your device. The message is also stored encrypted on the server, and once it is received by the other Gliph user, it may be temporarily cached on their device as well.

If the same message is deleted, (by either the sender or the receiver), the Gliph app first removes the message visually and from the local cache and then tells the server, “remove this message right now!” The server responds by deleting the information from Gliph’s database. If the other person has the app open, and are looking at the conversation, they will not see the message removed immediately.

However, the next time they refresh the view, the app will realize that the data does not exist anymore. This causes their app to visually remove and also delete the message in the local cache. This completes deletion of a message or entire conversation of messages on the Gliph platform.

Nitty Gritty Details
There are a lot of details when it comes to how “cacheing” is handled, particularly around the security of data stored in a local cache. For example, what happens if you’ve deleted a message but the other person hasn’t opened up the app? Is the message still in the device cache and vulnerable?

The security of this area varies with the platform you’re using and what you’ve done to it. For example, iOS protects application data from being accessed using something called “sandboxing” but may be vulnerable if the device is rooted using “jailbreaking.” Android uses a similar sandbox to isolate application data. However, many Android users seek full control over their devices and “root” their phones.

Both jailbreaking on iOS and rooting on Android present important security implications, because these operations can allow apps to access data they otherwise should not be able to. Android users have access to a variety of tools that look for vulnerabilities in apps on rooted and non-rooted devices and attempt to collect data from these apps. 

Gliph regularly wipes and re-loads the local cache on iPhone and Android to help reduce the likelihood that a jailbroken or rooted phone would have persistent message data. However, we strongly advise people to be aware of the security implications of using Gliph on jailbroken or rooted devices.

How Message Deletion on Gliph Works
There are three ways messages are deleted by the Gliph platform today. All of them follow a process outlined in “Behind the Scenes on Message Deletion on the Gliph Platform” outlined above.

Individual Message Deletion
Gliph’s iOS and web apps allow of you to delete individual Gliph messages. This happens when you swipe a message on the Gliph iPhone app to the left and choose delete. In the web app, you tap the Edit button in the top right of any conversation.  On Android, Gliph does not currently offer individual message deletion.

Conversation Deletion
All of Gliph’s apps allow you to delete all messages in a conversation at the same time. On iPhone, you can delete messages by swiping a conversation from the activity view. We have an animated gif showing this behavior in this blog entry.

On Android, the process has a few steps:

1. Go into a conversation.
2. Tap the ( i ) button in the action bar to go into the Gliph view.
3. Tap the 3 dots icon in the action bar.
4. Choose “clear all messages.”

On the web and iOS you can delete all messages by:

1. Go into a conversation.
2. Tap the center part of the title bar on the web or the ( i ) in the title bar of iOS to get to the Gliph View.
3. Scroll down and choose “Clear Conversation.”

GliphMe
GliphMe (video demo) has its own special behavior in how it handles deletion of messages. Once someone starts a conversation with you using one of your links, Gliph keeps track of when the last message was sent. After 48 hours, Gliph automatically deletes the entire conversation and connection with the GliphMe link respondent.  Connection data is permanently removed from the Gliph database as well.

Gliphme acts like this for two reasons: One, to reduce the clutter from conversations that you probably have no interest in continuing, and two to reduce the amount of unwanted private conversation data that Gliph is storing.

It is possible for GliphMe conversations to avoid this automatic removal after 48 hours. If someone who is not a Gliph user clicks a GliphMe link and uses that page to sign up for Gliph, the conversation will persist just like a normal conversation. At this time, we’re calling this “claiming” a conversation by the respondent. After a conversation has been claimed, the messages can still be deleted from that point using the same procedures outlined in “How Message Deletion on Gliph Works” above.

One area where message deletion is not supported is in a GliphMe conversation that has not been claimed. For example, if you reply to an inbound GliphMe message and then wish to delete that message. You can not do so if the respondent has not claimed the conversation yet. We recognize that this may be in conflict with expectations for uniform deletion behavior across Gliph and are still considering how best to handle this with GliphMe.

Expiring Messages
In the Gliph iOS and web apps, it is possible to set messages to expire after a period of time. This is very similar to how Gliph handles user-directed deletion of messages. Except in this case the server has set a particular time, when it will remove the data from the Gliph database. The next time either the sender or receiver opens the app after the message has been removed from the database, any existing local cache of the message is removed and it will no longer be visible on either user’s devices.

Data Impermanence and Privacy
When other internet services store your conversations permanently, unencrypted, it creates the possibility that that information will be hacked or even misused in the future. This is particularly concerning for messaging services that use advertising-based monetization, or are entertaining acquisition by an advertising-based company. This doesn’t need to happen.

At Gliph, we are designing software to avoid these issues. For example, the new product we released recently, GliphMe, uses automatic deletion of conversations after 48 hours. Another way we demonstrate commitment to this is by honoring what is implied in the interface. As in, “Delete” should mean stuff actually is deleted everywhere Gliph can, as promptly as possible.

The entire Gliph team feels there is a strong connection between privacy and impermanent or ephemeral online activity. This includes not only messages you’ve sent but who you have connected with online in the past.

This issue is particularly important as Gliph extends past simple messaging and into the realm of peer-to-peer transactions. We continue to think deeply about how we can empower people who use Gliph with both user experience and technical implementations that deliver privacy through data impermanence and beyond.

We love feedback! If you have comments on this blog entry or unanswered questions about deletion on Gliph, please send a message to the Support Gliph or to support [at] gli dot ph.

Introduction
GliphMe lets you create a web link that anyone can use to start chatting with you on your iPhone or Android. When someone clicks one of your links and sends you a message, you will be notified by the Gliph app. You can reply immediately wherever you are from your mobile device. Gliphme is useful in a variety of cases online, and you can learn more at GliphMe’s explanation page.

How GliphMe Works with Screenshots
Here’s how it works: You start by creating a new GliphMe link using the menu in the Gliph iPhone, Android or web app. GliphMe appears just below the Bitcoin option.

The first time you enter the GliphMe Management view, you will see you already have one link created automatically. This link is used for invitations you send from Gliph in the recently revised Connections View. You will also see that you have the option, Create new GliphMe link.

When you tap that, you’re able to choose a public label for the link. This label will be shown to anyone who clicks on the link you’re creating. You should choose something relatively short that describes what the GliphMe conversation is about.

Some examples include:

• “Trek 4600 Mountain Bike For Sale”
• “Discussion on implications of the Snowden revelations”
• “Feedback on ‘Jazz Hands,’ the song I posted on SoundCloud”

Any links you create are listed in the GliphMe management view. You can tap on the information icon to view the GliphMe Link Details view. This view lets you revise the title and also gives you the ability to disable a given link.

Sharing Your GliphMe Link
On iOS, tapping a row from the GliphMe Management view automatically copies it to your clipboard. You can paste this link just about anywhere you want to offer a new channel of realtime communication with you. Here are just a few examples where it might make sense to share a GliphMe link:

• As part of a tweet. (Include the hashtag #gliphme, if you like)
• In your LinkedIn profile
• Over another different messaging app, such as Facebook messenger
• In an online advertisement
• In the signature line of your emails on Gmail.

The possibilities are nearly endless for where these links can be used, and we’re interested to hear back from you on what you find most useful. Please message the Support Gliph with your feedback.

What Happens When Someone Clicks a Link
When someone clicks a GliphMe contact link they are presented a chat box that lets them communicate with the link creator. First, Gliph prompts them to enter their name or nickname and asks them to optionally enter an email address as well.

If the respondent chooses to enter their email address, Gliph will send them a link they can click to resume the conversation even if they close the browser tab or window. It will also notify them 24 hours before the conversation is immediately deleted.

After they click or tap Start Chat, Gliph presents them with the following chat box:

When they type their first message in and send it, you, the creator, will get a push notification on your smartphone.

If you open the push notification, you’ll be taken to a typical Gliph Messaging Conversation view.  You’ll won’t be able to send photos to them, delay messages or attach Bitcoin until they sign up and solidify the Connection with you.

Respondents Coming from the Mobile Web
This tutorial showed screenshots of what it looks like when the respondent is coming in from the desktop web. GliphMe also works if someone taps a link on their smartphone. They are presented with a chat box in their mobile browser and can sign up and claim the conversation just the same as desktop users.

How Privacy and Connections are Handled in GliphMe
There are two sides to GliphMe links. The creator of the link, (who is a Gliph user already), and the respondent, who is probably not yet a Gliph user.

As a creator, when you get a message from a respondent, you are not connected at first. Even though you are chatting, Gliph does not display your gliph to the other user. None of your facets, (public or private), are shown in the GliphMe chat window the respondent sees.

The GliphMe chat webpage provides a sign up form that allows the respondent to continue a conversation with the link creator. If they sign up, Gliph automatically turns the conversation into a full Gliph Connection. This conversation will be the first they see in the Activity view when they first sign into the app.  At that time they will be able to see your Gliph and any public-facing facets.

Gliph automatically deletes conversations where the respondent does continue it by creating an account within 48 hours after they sent their first message to the creator. GliphMe conversation deletion follows the same rules as normal Gliph Messaging: the conversation is permanently removed from Gliph’s servers and not recoverable.

The reasoning for this auto-deletion is two-fold: one it reduces clutter in your activity view of conversations with people you don’t continue to stay in contact with and two it encourages new people to sign up for Gliph. (We believe the Gliph platform will be more useful with more people on it, so it is natural for the team to want to encourage new people to sign up.)

You can still delete a connection that is created when a respondent to one of your GliphMe links signs up and claims the conversation. Same rules apply to “normally” created connections, all previous messages between you and the respondent are deleted.

Caveats and Additional Information

GliphMe has some limitations. If the respondent to one of your GliphMe links is already a Gliph user, we can’t automatically convert that into a conversation between you two. What we recommend at this point, is that you ask that person what their Gliph is, and use the normal new connection capability in the Gliph Connect View.  (The little + button in the title bar of the Activity view)

You can delete a GliphMe link on iOS by swiping the link to the left and then tapping the Delete button. You can disable a GliphMe link without deleting it, by tapping the “i” and then flipping the Active toggle.

Conclusion
We’re excited about how the GliphMe link can be used to improve private and secure communications across the internet. We hope you’ll share some of your feedback on the new feature by sending us a message using the Support Gliph.

Most of these updates can be seen in the iPhone and the Web. However, we’ve made some minor updates to the Android app to make it compatible with these other changes. Here are the detailed changes, in the new Gliph app for iOS:

The Connections view has been combined with the Activity View
Now, all of your contacts are listed in the main Gliph screen which we call the “Activity View.” A search bar is now available at the top, which lets you quickly filter your connections by Tag.

We made this change because conversations with zero messages would sometimes get hidden in Connections, and people struggled with understanding why some friends were there and no where else in the app.

The “Find Gliphs” and “Invite Friends” options are are now accessible via the “+” button
We’ve collapsed two options from the menu into a single view accessible using the “+” button in the title bar of the Activity View. Now, when you want to invite someone to Gliph or add someone who is already using Gliph, just tap the + button.

We made this change because we believe finding existing Gliph users and inviting non-Gliph users are similar actions: you’re trying to connect with someone new. We aim to foster new connections whenever possible, so we surfaced it directly into the Activity view.

Creating Connections is now as easy as sending a message to someone
When you use the + button to find a Gliph user, you have the choice to use the old Request Connection method or a new Send Message option. When you choose to Send Message you are dropped directly into a Conversation View. That user will get a notification of the new conversation and can accept the conversation simply by replying to your message.

We’ve introduced a new widget we call “the shade” in the Conversation View which notifies you that a conversation is still pending until you reply or tap an Accept button in the Shade.

If you’re a regular Gliph user, you may want to know how this impacts Privacy and how you can edit the facets you share with a new connection. The new Connection process shares only the Facets (personal information) that you have already marked as public.

You can still choose to share more private facets with someone, this is as simple as going to the conversation, tapping on the title bar, and choosing “Edit the Facets I share.” You can view what you have shared as public by visiting your Profile on iOS or in the Settings menu on the web and Android.

We made these changes because we have plenty of feedback that connecting with friends was just too complicated. We saw an opportunity to preserve the same privacy options as before and simplify the connection experience.

You can now view previews of the image attachments
Gliph for iOS allows you to send multiple image attachments to a particular message. Now you can see thumbnail previews of these images before you hit send. You can also remove any particular image if you don’t want to send it. Here’s what the new image attachment looks like:

We have some exciting things planned for Gliph, and some of these changes are important preparation steps for the future. We recognize change can be hard, and we’d like to get your feedback on the updates in this release. Please send feedback to the Support Gliph.

In this new release we’ve made Gliph account creation and Bitcoin wallet creation an amazingly near-instantaneous experience.

Changes to Signup
We now streamline the Gliph signup process. The app automatically selects a gliph (username) for you, yet allows you to customize your gliph as an option if you want.

Previously, we forced every new person to immediately choose the Artifacts (symbols) for their gliph. While some folks picked up on the idea of building a gliph out of Artifacts, some found it confusing. Gliph has a lot of new ideas in it. This change represents a step toward streamlining the process of getting started using the Gliph identity platform.

Instant Bitcoin Wallet Creation
Another big change in 1.5 is the “instant” creation of Coinbase accounts. If you’ve never used Bitcoin before, you will be prepared to receive Bitcoin immediately after accepting Coinbase’s Terms of Service.

Gliph magically creates a Coinbase account using a free Gliph Cloaked Email address, offering you a strong level of privacy in your Bitcoin transactions.

We believe signing up for Gliph on iOS is now the fastest and easiest way to get started with a Bitcoin wallet on the planet earth.

We continue to believe that Bitcoin is a very important part of Gliph’s future and are making changes to pave the way for this now. The team is excited about the further integration of Bitcoin into Gliph’s core experience.

Speed Enhancements
This isn’t exactly a part of the iOS release, however Gliph should be speedier for people across the globe. We’ve re-architected the infrastructure Gliph runs on, and now have servers in San Francisco, Ireland and Tokyo. No matter where you live, Gliph should be three to four times faster than it used to be.

Moving the Gliph Store and the New Profile View
You will also notice a new menu item directly below Activity called Profile. It features a steampunk-tastic icon. The Profile View is a new place where you can store and set the basic privacy settings of your facet information (personal data).

Previously, Gliph let you manage your personal data from the Settings view. There was an option called “Edit your Facets and Sharing.” This method of editing your personal information wasn’t obvious for a lot of people, both because they didn’t know what “facets” were and also because the option was buried in a Settings View.

Another change we made to the menu is the removal the Gliph Store. You can still reach the Cloaked Email upgrade options via the “Get More Cloaks” menu option. 

Privacy Considerations
Some of our more privacy-oriented folks may react to the appearance of a Profile with concern. We want to allay these concerns: nothing has changed with regard to what information is required to use Gliph. We still encrypt your data and keep it private as per our Privacy Policy.

You can still use Gliph without entering a name or phone number. You can still choose not to share information you’ve stored on Gliph with anyone. This new view does not change any aspect of how your personal data is shared with other people.

Storing personal data has always been an important part of Gliph. We want people to be able to share exactly what they want, when they want, with who they want. We always lean toward privacy. 

Conclusion
We’re excited about the changes we’re introducing to Gliph as we continue to bend it toward a more perfect digital identity. We continue to iterate, including some recent updates to the Gliph Android app. Thanks to all the folks who have supported Gliph up through today.

Many thanks to @iamthelawton, @signalspy and @nsasch on this release!

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.

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.

We began thinking about important questions around financial privacy. Who you give your money to and why is a some of the most private information you have. Although Bitcoin can be used to provide reasonable anonymity to the people transferring funds, folks still need a way to securely discuss their transactions. We noticed that using insecure channels like email to communicate about a Bitcoin transfer could lead to compromising the privacy of a transaction as a whole.

Finally, we noticed that Bitcoin offers very little in the way of an identity to associate with your wallet. One of Bitcoin’s strengths is that transfers are permanent. However, since anyone can have a Bitcoin account and there are no chargebacks, you need to be confident about who you are sending money to.

We realized the Gliph platform could play an important role in solving all of these problems. Today’s release is the start of some major steps from Gliph to improve the Bitcoin experience.

1. We are making it extremely easy to send Bitcoin with other Gliph users.
2. We are providing a secure environment to discuss transactions that end in Bitcoin payments.
3. We are pairing identity with Bitcoin wallet addresses.

These are our goals and today’s release marks the start of our journey toward accomplishing them. We are very excited and hope you’ll join us in making Gliph the best way to send Bitcoin online.

We’re proud to also announce today that Gliph has a new group of partners to help us achieve these goals. You can read about our new partnership with Boost VC in this blog entry.

As always, you can find Gliph on Twitter at @gli_ph and contact support at support@gli.ph.