Wickr Me messaging app is shutting down

Amazon-owned software company Wickr opted to ditch its free messaging app Wickr Me and focus on business and public sector customers instead.

Wickr Me, a free messaging app best known for its end-to-end encrypted communications, will stop accepting new users after December 31, 2022, AWS Wickr announced. Meanwhile, the end of 2023 will also mark the end of the Wickr Me app.

“After careful consideration, we will be concentrating Wickr’s focus on securing our business and public sector customers’ data and communications with AWS Wickr and Wickr Enterprise, and have decided to discontinue our consumer product, Wickr Me,” the company said in a statement.

The Wickr Me app was launched in 2012. Its creators say that user messages are protected by 256-bit authenticated end-to-end encryption, and the company does not have the key to decrypt them. Wickr boasted it would “take trillions of years” to break any of the encrypted keys.

Wickr’s high-strength encryption won the company contracts with the US Department of Defense (DoD) to provide the US government with secure communication services. The software company behind Wickr Me app, Wickr, was acquired by Amazon Web Services in 2021.

Wickr’s secure messaging services also attracted illicit activity, prompting concerns about the app’s popularity among drug dealers and other unsavory figures. According to the shutdown announcement, Wickr will focus exclusively on organizational customers in both private and public sectors.

In case you’re looking for an alternative messaging app Cybernews looked into a dozen apps that advertise to offer end-to-end encrypted messaging for their users.