Our Encryption

In spite of what some people say, encryption really does work, it really can protect you. Governments, banks and professional spies rely on encryption. If it didn't work, would they use it?

Encryption uses a series of digits (the "key") with special formulas to scramble your message so only your recipient can unscramble it. That "key" is very difficult to guess when you use strong encryption, there are so many possibilities. Many other services that offer encryption keep the key, but getting a copy of the key from the service is the easiet way to break in to your messages. With Unseen, you keep the key, so it's not possible for even possible for us to read any of your messages.

Keep in mind, with enough time and advanced technology, anything can be broken. You need something that can't be broken by the particular person trying to break into the message. The high school kid next door has different capabilities than hackers looking for bank account information, or those of Big Brother. We have two different levels at Unseen; "pretty good" encryption, which is Free, and very strong encryption which is our Premium level service.

Ever since a former security contractor told us "if it's publicly available, it's cracked" several years ago, we've assumed that backdoors and weakeners have been included in the public encryption libraries. We know you wanted more and set out a year ago to deliver the next generation in encryption technology.

We decided to completely replace the standard AES encryption we started with for all free AND premium users with something much stronger. This new encryption is running now on the site, providing all levels of service with a much upgraded and extremely strong but not widely available encryption. In the running for the AES standard, our encryption runs a healthy 4096 bits, much, much stronger than off the shelf AES.

For key exchange, we are in the process of replacing the industry standard RSA 2048 bits encryption with a lattice type of encryption. This offers much faster speed with key generation and is believed to resist cracking by quantum computers. Key generation speed is important because that's how you'll be able to generate your own keys on a mobile device; the current RSA is too slow, taking about 20 minutes to generate a 2048 bits key.

We're giving those levels of security even to our free users. We feel everyone deserves to have good security.

For those desiring more security, we offer a Premium service which will feature One Time Pad. This classic encryption doesn't use repetitive math formulas and the key is the same length (or longer) than the message. This was originally developed by telegraph operators in the 1880's in the United States; because it uses a different technique to hide your message, it's very powerful and considered immune to cryptanalysis even today. We're making it even simpler to use this powerful way to encrypt your messages.

We haven't added a "backdoor" like you will find in most public encryption libraries. These lesser known algorithms were never chosen as standards, so they should be more difficult to break into because they never had "contributions" from spies who intentionally weakened the code.

While no encryption or security is perfect, rest assured that Unseen provides some of the best available. We also add network security and tools to help you improve your security habits, which are actually the first place the spies always start. If you tell them your password, they don't need to crack anything, so the best security always starts with YOU. ... less