Messages on Turkey’s ‘native’ WhatsApp-like app untraceable: Transport Minister
Nuray Babacan – ANKARA
Transport Minister Ahmet Arslan has claimed that the government’s new “domestic” messaging app, reportedly introduced to rival WhatsApp, will protect all users’ privacy and conversations on it will be untraceable.
“We are very assertive about the security of the ‘native WhatsApp.’ We are preparing this system with such a cryptology that only the sender and receiver are connected. The data on this system cannot in any way be stored. Nobody will have the chance to interfere in this system. We’ll make citizens believe in this app,” Arslan told daily Hürriyet on Feb. 14.
He also emphasized that despite the new app’s secure end-to-end encryption for messages, there have been attempts by hackers around the world to breach its encryption.
“From the moment we launched this project there have been extraordinary attacks from all over the world to break it. But so far it has not been in any way intercepted. Our colleagues are very assertive on this issue,” Arslan said.
The app, dubbed “PttMessenger” after Turkey’s Post and Telegraph General Directorate (PTT), was introduced last week in a limited roll-out to state institutions and some private companies.
“First of all institutions will use the app for their correspondences. Latter we will offer services in line with private companies’ demand. After six months the app will become publicly available,” Arslan said, adding that they are also looking for a new name for the app.
“We first indicated the name as ‘PTT.’ But while offering services we will give use different names for public institutions and citizens. We want the name to evoke the purpose [of the app] and also to be pronounced [easily] abroad. Many countries are already demanding this system, especially in Central Asia and Africa,” he added.
