Now Johnny can encrypt!

In 1999 Alma Whitten and J. D. Tygar presented a paper at the USENIX security symposium in Washington, D.C. with the title "Why Johnny Can't Encrypt: Social Aspects and Barriers to Adoption of Privacy Technology". The paper examined the interface of a popular e-mail encryption software tool, and concluded that it was far too difficult to use for the average user. Not much has changed since then.

You see, before freenigma, strong e-mail encryption was a complex task. Users had to know how to generate a keyring with public and private keys, choose an encryption algorithm and the right key length. Do you know the difference between symmetric and asymmetric encryption? Can you tell RSA and AES apart? Is a 1024-bit key good or bad?

We think you don't need to know. freenigma takes care of the complexity involved in cryptography. Our focus was to hide this complexity under a very simple user interface.

Most people on the web know instant messengers like Google Talk, ICQ, Yahoo! Messenger AOL's AIM and social network services like Friendster, LinkedIn, Google's Orkut or the German OpenBC. These services are called social software. That's why we designed the freenigma user interface with a social software metaphor: You just invite people to secure communication. Everybody knows how this works. That is one reason why freenigma is so easy to use.

This is what it looks like: