When we first reported on this the application was not quite ready for the public, now things have progressed and there is a public alpha version of the application available for grabs. The application comes in three flavors; Windows, Android and, Mac. This will cover a pretty large user base for testing. BitTorrent does recommend that you stick with WiFi connections during the Alpha trials as the client is something of a data hog right now. They also mention there are some battery life issues related to the current release.

The concept of encrypted chat has caught the public attention since we found out that the NSA and other agencies were working with ISPs, Telcoms and other corporations to collect information on our communication. It is not a new technology, but it is an important one and not just for privacy. The ability to send messages to friends, family or even co-workers without the fear that someone (anyone) can grab it and read it in transit or on a server is unsettling. What makes this even worse is the fact that the companies that push the use of basic SMS or chat applications know that there are flaws in it and yet still push them as a safe means of communication.

We hope that Bleep can deliver on their promises of a secure and safe way to communicate over the internet. There are still some questions that we would like to see answered though. We want to know what safe guards are in place to prevent swarm poisoning and how Bleep intends to defend against honey pot nodes that are designed to simply capture all traffic and span it to another device for analysis. We know that both of these are possible in current BitTorrent swarms and even on the Tor Network, so unless there is something very different in Bleep we could see the same thing here.

If you want to try it out, you can set up Bleep using an email account, mobile number or even without any personally identifying information. The application is available on their website as well as in the Google Play Store.

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