Makers of Privacy App Used by Trump Team Sued Over Alleged Security Flaws

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Confide, Inc., the company behind an encrypted messaging app of the same name purporting privacy and confidentiality, is the defendant in a proposed class action alleging it fraudulently induces users into purchasing premium subscriptions for a service that fails deliver on its key promises.

“Contrary to Confide’s representations, the app fails to protect communications its users send through it, and it fails to offer the unequivocal confidentiality advertised by Confide,” the 22-page complaint alleges. “Specifically, Confide fails to deliver on two of the three requirements that it espouses as necessary for confidential communications: ephemerality and screenshot protection.”

Without these protections, the Confide app allegedly falls woefully short of what is promised to users, who the complaint claims pay the defendant a premium price to communicate “without fear of the Internet’s permanent, digital record and with no copies left behind.”

The app has been in the news recently due to revelations that more than one member of President Donald Trump’s administration publically copped to using the app for “confidential communications related to matters of national importance.”

The Michigan man who filed the case claims Confide, Inc. has taken full advantage a “surge in public demand” for services that offer secure and confidential communications.

It’s on pages six and seven of the complaint that the plaintiff expands one of many of the Confide app’s alleged shortcomings:

“Unbeknownst to consumers, Confide’s app fails to satisfy its own criteria for confidentiality. Specifically, Confide failed to engineer its Windows version of its app with screenshot protection. And in so doing, Confide ensured that any message sent through its messaging platform is (and has been) at risk of storage. Consumers who erroneously thought they were using a secure platform to send confidential and potentially compromising information are now at great risk of having that information used against them.”

The proposed class includes anyone in the United States who paid for a Confide subscription after August 2015.