In the misinformation age, technology has reached a point where the average user regularly has their trust shaken by the tech and institutions meant to enhance their daily lives. Between data breeches and large companies selling user data to the highest bidder, consumers feel an increasing need for privacy policies and tooling that upholds and promotes those policies. The most basic of these tools is a private means of communication, an end-to-end encrypted chat application.
- End-to-end encryption: the application must encrypt and decrypt messages to secure the contents of a message while in transit.
- Authentication: the application must authenticate and confirm user identities.
- Error handling: the application must handle errors such as connection issues and conditions where messages fail to send or arrive.
- Security: the application must ensure confidentiality, integrity, and authenticity of the users and messages they send.
- Usability: the application must be user-friendly, especially for users that tend to not be tech-savvy.
- Reliability: the application must be able to recover from failures and errors.
- Availability: the application must be available to users for the expected service duration and uptime.