#525 Can Privacy Survive AI Surveillance? Kee Jefferys on Decentralized Messaging and Digital Freedom

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Mehmet: Hello and welcome back to an episode of the CTO Show with Mead today are very pleased. Joining me from Australia Kee, Jefferys Kee. Thank you very much for being here with me today. The way I love to do it. As I was explaining to you, uh, before we started the [00:01:00] recording, I keep it usually to my guest to introduce themselves.

Tell us a more about, you know, their background, their journey, what they're currently up to as just as a teaser for the audience. We're gonna talk a lot today about privacy. End to end encryption in the messaging space, AI and blockchain. So without further ado, I will leave the floor to you Kee. 

Kee: Awesome.

Uh, yeah. Hey guys. Good to be here. Uh, my name's Kee. I'm working on the session project, have been doing that for about seven and a half years at this point. So long time in the messaging space, and also kind of tangentially in the crypto space as well. Um, I serve kind of as the kind of, well, one of the co-founders of session, but also kind of more so on the technical side.

So, uh, kind of, I've had the, uh, title of Chief technical Officer before. Um, I think nowadays to just say that I'm a, a co-founder focusing on the technical side of things. So yeah. [00:02:00] Good to be here with you. 

Mehmet: Great. Thank you again, Keith, for making it. Let's start with the story of what you're currently doing at Sessions and, you know, you, you said that you have experience in, in the messaging space, what's wrong and what you know as a co-founder.

What was like the motive to start this project? 

Kee: Yeah, well, I mean, what is wrong, I would say broadly is that most messaging applications that are trying to focus on privacy don't focus on the kind of types of privacy which matter the most, um, in terms of practical scenarios. So they're often not focusing on metadata collection, which, you know, most of the end-to-end encrypted messengers that you have these days are end-to-end encrypted.

So the, the intermediary that's, you know. Pulling around all of the messages, can't see the message contents, um, but they can see all of the metadata, which is related to a message. And I think session is one of the kind of [00:03:00] premier messaging applications, private messaging applications, which is actually focusing on the metadata problem.

And we have implemented a lot of privacy enhancements on the metadata side to actually. You know, hide users metadata when they use session. In terms of how we got here in the first place, um, we were kind of is, this is seven and a half years ago, so it was quite some time ago, but we were looking at, uh, you know, some other blockchains that were coming out.

Um, privacy based, uh, blockchains, which were providing transactional privacy. And then also incentivized chains kind of like Dash, which you know, is probably a blast from the past for people to hear that name 'cause um, DASH hasn't done so well, you know, in the last, uh, you know, seven and a half years, but Dash was kind of the first, um, cryptocurrency to have this idea that you would have a network of nodes that was incentivized to actually perform some actions.

Um, and, and they were very early to that idea of like a master node network. So we were kind [00:04:00] of looking at, you know, decentralized networks like tor, then also incentivized networks like Dash and kind of we thought about, okay, how can we combine these things together to have a incentivized network?

That's decentralized and provides privacy to its users. And that's what we kind of kicked off, uh, seven and a half years ago. And the, the product that we've actually built that a lot of people use is session, and that operates on top of that network infrastructure that we started, uh, a long time ago.

Mehmet: Cool. Now Kee, maybe the first thing that comes to people mind. I, I think, you know. Uh, everyone and you explained it like how the end-to-end exp uh, you know, encryption and I'm just putting quote on code. Um, it has what people would know it as a backdoor. You mentioned about the metadata and everything.

It's, it's funny enough like how yesterday I was trying to explain to people, like for example, I would, okay, I don't know if I would be in trouble, but let's say one of the biggest. [00:05:00] Uh, chat application. Very well known. I said, maybe they will not know what you typed inside, but they would know how many times you wrote to the same people.

Like they would know, um, you know, if you had a audio call or a, you know, video call, they would know like how much that you know now. On the other side and, and, you know, policymakers and maybe some people, they would say, okay, we understand the privacy should be there, but how we countermeasure people who might use a completely anonymized, unbreakable encryption for something bad, especially, you know, people who put the measurements for, you know, counter-terrorism and, and things like that.

So what's the answer for this? 

Kee: Look, it's a, it's a very tricky, um, question to answer. Um. And as someone who works in the messaging space and is particularly focused on [00:06:00] PRI privacy and security, it's a question that we face every day. I think the most important thing is the way that you design, uh, your messaging application.

If you're trying to provide anonymity and privacy and there's certain ways or there's certain features that you could add to a messaging application, which would make it, um, more misused, and there's certain features that you can add in, which would make them. The application less misused. You know, we're thinking about things like, um, the ability to set up really large groups in the application and have those groups be discoverable just by typing in the search box, for example.

Um, that can create, uh, a potential for. For, you know, a misuse, uh, of the application. So you can imagine if someone sets up a bad group, uh, and then someone joining the messaging service just types in the search box, like the content that they're, uh, wanting to find, whether that be like drugs or something like that.

They type in like drugs in the search, and immediately they have a community, which is, you know, tens of thousands of people talking [00:07:00] about this, um, topic, which is potentially, you know, uh, against the terms of service or against the laws. Certain country. So it's really the way that session is designed is that it does provide that privacy and security to everyone who uses it.

But the design is very intentional to make everything kind of consent based. So, you know, when someone messages you, you have to explicitly accept their message request and that cuts down on spam. Um, we don't like, although we do have big communities, uh, in session, they're not discoverable inside of the application.

You actually have to. Get a link from an external service and then join that community. So there's a lot of things in sessions design, uh, which minimizes misuse while also, while also still providing, you know, a very high level of privacy and security to users that are using service. So I think it's really on that design, uh, side where the, the problems can be solved.

But I will just say as well, like I don't think the right approach to this is like. [00:08:00] Putting a wholesale backdoor into, you know, people's, uh, end-to-end encryption where the government can just read all of the messages. And that's, you know, some of what is being proposed from legislators right now. Um, you know, just to give an example, like we know the vast majority of crimes happen inside of the house, you know, inside of people's houses, whether that be like partners, you know, abusing each other or.

Money laundering or drugs trading, like they happen a lot in residential houses, but we're not kind of saying at the same time that everyone should have a security camera installed in their house to watch them at all times. Right. That would be a ridiculous notion. Right. Even though we know crime happens majority in people's houses, so you know, it's, we have to think about these things from a civil li liberties perspective as well and have to balance those concerns around design, uh, and misuse of the application too.

Mehmet: Great. Now it's good. You mentioned about, you know, the attempts, especially we've seen it in, [00:09:00] I know in, in Australia, like, you know, you, you need a court, uh, approval for revealing, you know, the messages. Uh, we've seen push in Europe. I think there was some something related to even the Apple iMessage few months ago.

There was a big debate over there also as well. Um, are you seeing like some countries. Heading toward the normalization of these back doors, uh, and chat control despite, you know, all the activists, uh, activists and, you know, the pushback from, from the larger community. Like is this like something like, I'm asking this question because some people might not know alternatives like session today.

So do you think like it'll become kind of something normal? Okay. I would know that someone might be reading my message at some stage. 

Kee: Yeah, I think the, the use of privacy, you know, based messages, messages which are specifically focusing on providing users a high level of [00:10:00] privacy and security is increasing.

Um, we've seen that on the session side, but also other applications like Signal, for example, are seeing, you know, massive increase in users and that is often tied to particular government legislation which has passed. So, for example, in Russia recently we've seen. A move from the Russian government to move users outside of an encrypted, uh, chat application into like a state owned chat application, which they can see all of your messages and your metadata in.

Uh, and that's kind of led a lot of Russian users to look at alternatives like signal and session. Um. On the other side, like the, from the legislation perspective, I do think that a lot of countries are moving in this direction and I think unfortunately Australia and the UK have been the ones that have kind of been leading some of this push.

Uh, the chat control legislation as well was discussed extensively, um, in the eu and that's like kind of in the process. Of being passed, but there's a lot of pushback, um, from, you know, [00:11:00] just general citizens in the EU against that type of legislation. Uh, and that's part of the reason as well, that session has moved.

Its kind of, um, that the entity which actually kind of stewards the project to Switzerland. That doesn't provide, you know, a lot of people say, oh, it's Swiss base like that, that means it's super private. Um, that's not actually where a lot of the privacy comes from. Uh, in session, a lot of the privacy comes from the fact that you're not using phone numbers, you're using a decentralized network, and we're using onion routing to hide the IP addresses in the network as well.

That's where a majority of the privacy comes. But you also need to think about, um, you know, where the developers are based, like what the organization that funds the development of the teams are. And to have that, you know, in Australia would be more risky from a, a legal perspective. And to have it in Switzerland, I think provides a very strong legislative framework.

They have constitutional protections for privacy in Switzerland, which make it, um, you know, [00:12:00] much, much easier. And, um. It, it's not necessarily that you're even trying to avoid legislation, it's just that you want a clear legislative framework that you can build under, um, so that you know what's gonna happen next week.

Um, you know, if next week one of these governments just says, okay, we're gonna ban all of this. You know, technology. That's it. It really impossible to build like a, a decentralized chat application around. So you need to kind of be, uh, thinking about these things, um, before they come. And then Switzerland's been really, uh, ahead of the game for, for protecting people's privacy in that way.

Mehmet: Absolutely. Now, so just for non-technical audience, if I'm using a session today, um. And I had an issue with someone, which maybe I know, maybe I didn't know before I, right. So even, you know, technically it's not possible to go and. [00:13:00] Track, you know, when anything about this chat, unless the person shows the messages, uh, if they still on, on, on their phones.

Am I correct you? Yeah, exactly. 

Kee: I think that's kind of where session, uh, differentiates itself from some of the other private messaging applications as well. If you consider, say for example, signal. Um, in the, in the kind of signal case, signal is running all of the servers. So they have centralized servers which they operate, and those servers, uh, relay your messages.

So when you send a message to someone, it's gonna go to the signal servers, and signal servers are gonna send it to that other user. So even though the messages are end-to-end encrypted, the signal servers end up seeing a lot of metadata about, you know, what is happening in a conversation. Whereas in the session case.

Um, you know, the developers that work on session don't actually run the servers in the network. That's a decentralized network of nodes, so about 1600 nodes that are run by community members all across the [00:14:00] world. So if someone comes to us and says, you know, you need to give us the information about this chat.

We don't actually run the servers that that chat would've, uh, gone through. So they would've would have to go to the decentralized network of node operators and talk to them. But those node operators are all around the world. You know, some of them are, some of them are anonymous. Um, you know, there's people all around the world, different jurisdictions.

So that becomes much harder for, you know, governments or third parties or hackers to be able to get access to users' information. And I think that's where we're in a unique position compared to all of the messaging applications, which use a centralized service. 

Mehmet: Yeah, when I was also checking on your website, one thing that caught my attention is the signup is without giving email, without giving a phone number.

The first thing that came to my mind, of course, there's some authentication mechanism in place, so if I forget my password or my, [00:15:00] uh, authentication, uh, how do, what do I do? How, how I can recover. 

Kee: So, I mean, some of your viewers and and yourself, uh, would be familiar with the idea of creating a cryptocurrency wallet.

And the basic idea there is, uh, when you create your wallet, you get this like 12 words and you write those 12 words down on a piece of paper, or you save them in your password manager. And as long as you have those 12 words, you can always recover your account. Um, so you just need to back those up. And if you, your phone gets smashed or you drop it in the toilet or something like that, you can always come back with those 12 words and recover your account.

Mehmet: Cool. This is, this is, you know, a, a clever mechanism, I would say, uh, because for people who are not familiar with, uh. With the cryptocurrencies, um, uh, to, uh, Keith's point, you, you know, when you create the wallet to recover it, you, they give us these like, uh, some words, random words, uh, and then you need to save them [00:16:00] somewhere.

Uh, keep, keep them in a safe. So, so this is, this is good to know. Uh, and of course this is, will, will give the anonymity, which is, again, it's similar to the cryptocurrency. So no one knows who owns actually, um. Let's say this, this, this account or username, whatever you you want to call it now, from adoption perspective, um.

I know like you've seen a, a significant, uh, uh, you know, tipping point of reaching over 1 million, uh, monthly users. Uh, how, you know, you've seen this, like, was it a signal? That people are looking for more privacy, more, uh, control over the messaging app they want to use. And from, maybe if you can explain, uh, we don't want to go too much technical, but as much as possible because you are relying on a community to host the nodes, right?

So how the scalability, [00:17:00] um, can be achieved there for that massive amount of users monthly. 

Kee: Yeah, so like from the perspective of our growth, um, it's been really good. I think the reason that is, is because session is positioned in a very unique kind of way. There are other private messages out there, um, but most of them will require a phone number to sign up, and as soon as you link your phone number with your accounts, that creates both privacy risks and security risks.

So, you know, from a privacy perspective, we use our phone numbers basically everywhere. Like we use them against our business name. We'll use them to sign up for a million different services that require your phone number, and if any of those services gets hacked. Now your name and your email address, and potentially your address is linked to your phone number.

And if you're using that phone number as well on your messaging service, then your identity instantly becomes linked to all of the [00:18:00] messages that you're sending on that messaging service. So that's, uh, a risk from a privacy perspective. From a security perspective, uh, you know, we have so many sim swapping attacks these days where, you know, people will call up your telecom provider and say, you know, I'm this person.

I need to reset my sim. And the telecom provider will then send a new sim to the other person or transfer it, uh, to the other person. And now they have access to your entire messaging account. For example. So that is a massive risk from the sim uh, perspective as well, which we didn't want, uh, to be beholden to, and we didn't want to create those security and privacy risks.

Um. From a perspective of like actually kind of getting people onto the platform and how it scales, uh, over time. Uh, I think session at this point is, you know, probably dealing with, you know, hundreds of millions of messages, billions of messages since, you know, session was started. Uh, the basic way that it remains scalable is that there is [00:19:00] this network of 1600 nodes and what is actually being sent on the network is fairly small text, uh, messages.

So they're actually not. Massive to store. Um, you know, if you send an average message that's gonna be like one kilobyte, which is very small considering mm-hmm. That most people have, you know, um, hard drives that are a terabyte. So that's, you know, a lot of, a lot of room, uh, to actually scale out. And the other thing that session does quite uniquely, uh, is it actually kind of.

Shards the network up into different segments, and those segments will store a portion of the messages for the network. So there's still, you get that redundancy, which you want to have, but it's not like every message is being stored on every node, which means that you get a lot more scalability from that perspective.

And finally, uh, the other thing that we do is every 14 days. The messages, uh, will be deleted from the network as well. So that provides not only a, you know, security benefit in terms of your messages aren't being stored forever. Uh, but it also [00:20:00] provides like that scalability as well because you're constantly wiping the old messages, which means you can store new messages in that place.

So there's a lot more room for session to scale up to many, many more, uh, users, even with the current infrastructure as it is. 

Mehmet: I got it. So just quickly, can I still send photos or videos? 

Kee: Yes. Um, okay. The way that that works is that essentially you're sending a link in your message to the, uh, photo, photo or the file.

Um. Which is then uploaded to a different server. So you're not actually sending, uh, the file itself in the message, you're kind of sending a link to it, which means that, you know, there's not, uh, hundreds of gigabytes being stored on all of these different notes, 

Mehmet: audio and video calls possible. 

Kee: Uh, we have audio and video.

Um, so that's done right now doing a, uh, peer-to-peer connection between the two users so it doesn't flow through a server typically, depending on the network conditions, but most calls will [00:21:00] happen peer to peer. Um, and that means that that kind of, um, bandwidth consideration doesn't have to go through that network of nodes as well because it's just two users talking directly to each other and it's end-to-end encrypted as well.

Mehmet: Got it. Um, so, so I think this is a proof maybe Kee, and I know you talk about it, that messaging apps, you know, they can be more than just consumer tools because I know, like you argue like it's a, it's a kind of a blockchain green reward utility, right. 

Kee: Yeah, certainly there aren't too many, uh, blockchain applications, uh, that are out there that have the amount of users that session has, and I think that's because the design has been so intentional to not kind of push people into the crypto aspect of things.

Um, you know, there's a lot of onboarding issues that happen when you get people into crypto, and I think crypto has left a little bit of a bad taste. In a bunch of people's mouths. You know, a lot of people associated it with [00:22:00] scams or meme coins. Um, so when you sign up the session, there's no like token that you have to get or you don't have to onboard to.

A crypto like experience or pay or anything like that. It's a free application. You download it, you create an account and you start sending. And all of the crypto aspect really happens at the incentivization layer for the node network. So that network of 1600 nodes that is running, they're incentivized with a crypto token.

Mm-hmm. And that's where the incentives lay. But for the user, they don't have to like directly engage with this system. Um. We kind of have some backend systems so they can engage with it. Um, but they don't have to if they don't want to, which I think is the best way to kind of integrate crypto without kind of pushing it in people's face.

Mehmet: I, I like it, you know, because to your part, and I discuss it with a lot of, uh, blockchain and crypto pioneers who all agreed, you know, on the same thing you said, because of some of the, [00:23:00] you know, bad things that happened. So it affected the whole. Uh, industry, I would say. So people think, oh, like it's a blockchain.

It's crypto. Crypto means like, uh, these meme coins and the other things that we've seen, and they don't want to use it. They lose trust. But the good thing is we started now to see this shift again. Um, especially with some other use cases. We, we started to see like, for example, real world asset tokenization and, you know, uh, plenty of use case.

Even some governments are now. Endorsing, you know, uh, the blockchain technology, which is fantastic. Now when I want to come back to, to the surveillance, right? And now AI is, is making it more powerful just me mention the, the use case or like the example of, you know, doing the sim swap and all this. And we know like with ai, deep fakes and all these things, uh, things are getting a little bit worse.

Uh, and even, you know. [00:24:00] It, it's also on the other side as well. So ai, it's making the surveillance, you know, even from, let's say authorities' perspective, easier because you can detect, um, you know, patterns, you can detect, you know, some, some stuff. You can automate things at a large scale. How do you see the role of the decentralized privacy first apps?

Like, like, like, uh, what you're currently doing, encountering this trend? 

Kee: Yeah, so I think the, the most interesting thing with AI that's going on right now. Is that, you know, AI has these kind of concepts of scaling. So there's like different ways to scale up your ai, um, you know, to make it better and to improve the, the system that people are chatting with, for example.

And typically, like you're looking at like three different like parameters that you can kind of plug into your AI model to make it better. One of them is data. Um, so like the more data that you have to [00:25:00] train on, the better the AI is typically gonna be. Uh, the next is compute. And this is the reason that, you know, people are building these massive data centers like all over the world right now to be able to maximize the compute that they can use to train and then infer, um, with their ai.

And the third is like the actual like model design. Like there's a bunch of researchers that are working on more efficient ways to use the compute, uh, more efficient ways to use data, for example. So like when you look at those three things, I think that the one that's uh, kind of being, it's been explored to an extent is like training on more data.

And we're already kind of at the point where the big AI companies have scraped the entire internet essentially. You know, all of the Wikipedia articles, like all of the Twitter posts, all of the Reddit posts, and they're using this to train their ai, but they've essentially run out of data to train on now.

And that creates like this really lucrative market, uh, for data brokers to be able to go after more personal [00:26:00] data. Uh, and I think that is gonna start impacting chat applications soon as well. And I think it's gonna be hard for some of those centralized companies to say no. Um. If they come up against an AI company that's like, okay, we'll pay you, you know, billions and billions of dollars for your users', um, messages that they send through the service to train out AI on.

And that is really scary, uh, because I think that data is gonna be very useful. 'cause if you think about the way that ai, uh, applications are trained and the way that we use those AI applications. It's mostly chatbots, right? Like we're mostly talking to chatbots, right? And chatbots are trying to emulate the experience of like talking to another human.

So what better data to train on than the actual conversations of humans? And you know, WhatsApp for example, is a massive, uh, source. If they were able to tap into that data, I think that's gonna become more common. You know, companies making agreements with AI companies [00:27:00] to sell the user data to train on.

And I think that's where session fits in really nicely, because people are not going to want to be having their personal data sold to these AI companies to train on. 'cause it's extremely sensitive data. And I think session offers a safe ha uh, or a safe harbor, uh, for people's messages. We, we can't sell your data to, you know, AI because we don't have it.

We don't have it. Exactly. Um, so I think that's where kind of I'm seeing the AI stuff and I'm also thinking, okay, I think this is gonna be good for us long term, um, because of how that market is developing and the way that we're pushing back against that. 

Mehmet: Do you think one of the countermeasures that these, um, I'm not sure who gonna do it.

Uh, the messaging apps or the AI companies, they're gonna try to incentify users to maybe open doors for sharing some, they will tell them some of your data or they will do it in a sneaky way. Um, because, you know, [00:28:00] we've seen examples where people discover after a while, like for example, uh, on your smartphone you discover that the application has more, um, you know, privacy settings that should be open.

Uh, so, so the users would not know about it. What, what do you think the route that they might try to, to, to, to try. 

Kee: I, I think they're gonna try everything that they can. Um, I think, you know, some of the more centralized companies like Meta, um, you know, which are obviously owns WhatsApp and Instagram and Messenger.

I think, you know, I'm, I'm not sure, but I think that they may just go like wholesale and just. Start selling users data, um, without, you know, informing users that they're, they're doing that. I think their terms of service would potentially already allow, uh, that kind of access to users data. So they wouldn't actually necessarily need to, you know, clear that with users or offer them a financial incentive for some of the more kind of.

Privacy based messages, they may look into, you know, how can we incentivize users to be able [00:29:00] to provide this data to us with an opt-in, uh, kind of, uh, structure. But that's going to be more expensive than just using the users data, uh, under the terms of service that you already have applied. Uh, and if a company, an AI company is looking at, you know, okay, who we should, who we should buy our data from.

They're gonna go with the cheapest option, right? As long as that data's high quality. So I think they'll still be incentivized to kind of talk to these providers that are, you know, very much in the gray market when it comes to user's data. We, we've seen that, you know, meta doesn't have the best, uh, track record when it comes to protecting user data.

Mehmet: Someone might ask you Kee they say. We got it. You know, user privacy first. You know, all the measures you mentioned, the technology that run it, uh, how you incentivize actually the, the people who runs the node, the community, the question that comes how, you know, you make money. [00:30:00] How, what's, is there a monetization any by any, by any mean, or like, is it like just a, a, a, a, a community project.

Kee: So, I mean, I guess I would say it's a bit of both. Like the, the Session Foundation that's based in Switzerland is actually a, a non-for-profit. Um, so it's not seeking to kind of make billions and billions of dollars like providing this messaging service, but it is important that session stays sustainable.

And I think the way that, you know, session developers and the foundation are looking at that right now. Um, and what we've kind of made steps towards and that we're implementing right now is a premium or a freemium model. Um, so very similar to what Telegram is doing with Telegram Premium, where, you know, you have most of the users that use Telegram don't use Telegram Premium.

Um, but Telegram Premium offers this kind of subscription service that you can sign up for. It's like 4 99 a month. And it provides you with additional features in Telegram. So [00:31:00] that's like, you know, you get this nice like animated avatars, you get the ability to send more messages, pin more chats, uh, faster downloads, larger files.

Um, those are the things that power users really like to use on these messaging service. And I think we've seen Telegram be very successful deploying that. And actually getting a lot of users signing up for it. So I think for session, uh, the model will be similar and that's what we're calling Session Pro.

Um, it's not actually fully deployed yet, you know, we're getting ready for the, the beta of, of Session Pro, but it'll be a similar idea. You know, users will pay, um. Say 4 99 a month or some price. And that, uh, price then goes back into the network, um, in a kind of indirect way to incentivize the node network, which is running the entire session, uh, service.

So that keeps things sustainable. 'cause you can't just, you know, give out tokens infinitely, like eventually, you know, the people will say like, oh, it's just, you know, there's a lot of inflation going on [00:32:00] here. You actually need to have some. Funds coming back into the system to balance out those equations.

And that's where Session Pro comes in. 

Mehmet: So, and I believe these payments would be crypto based payments. 

Kee: Well, where, where ideally, uh, the way that we'll be able to, um, work this out is that, you know, users will be able to pay via Apple Pay or Google Pay, and then, um, third party payment providers may convert that into.

Session tokens. And then those session tokens get burned and then they're able to be rem minted, um, back to the session node network, which is the node network, which runs the entire infrastructure for sessions. So the hope is that, you know, we don't have to have mo most users don't understand crypto, right?

So we're, we're, most people understand that, you know? Um, so we would like people to be able to pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay, which people are very familiar with. Like when you purchase something in app, you just press the Apple Pay button and you, you pay. And then on the backend that fee app [00:33:00] value is converted into, uh, tokens, which actually power the entire network.

So that's the way we're thinking about it. There will also be crypto payment options as well. Um, but the vast majority of users, I think, will be engaging with the system from something that they already know, which is Apple Pay or Google Pay. 

Mehmet: Yeah, so the reason I ask, because you know, if I don't have to put my email, my phone, why I would put, you know, my payment.

But again, I understand you want to create the frictionless experience for the users who might not be familiar with the crypto, which, which also makes a lot of of sense now. Yeah, I think 

Kee: it's like you kind of have two routes. So like one is for the users that are seeking the maximum privacy and they can go to a website.

And they can pay via crypto, uh, directly, right. You know, to be able to en uh, enable themselves to use Session Pro. And then the other route is for the users that are already familiar with Apple Pay or Google Pay, we still want to provide them like a high level of privacy so that there isn't, uh, an exposure of, say, their [00:34:00] pay personal payment information to us, uh, or a third party that's pay, like processing the payment.

Um, but for those users, they're, they're gonna find it hard to get into crypto. We still wanna enable them to be able to kind of incentivize the network long term. Otherwise we'll be missing out on a lot of people. Um, so you kind of have two systems that people can use and depending on where they want to set their privacy level at, they can use the more private one or they can just use the easier one that's, you know, more familiar.

So that. 

Mehmet: Got it. Uh, now just, you know, for the audience who might be, uh, watching or listening to us today, and maybe it's the, their first time they, they hear about session, is it accessible from any place? Or they might need to do some extra, extra steps to be able to use the app. 

Kee: I think that's the great thing about session and the thing that we've focused on a lot is having a session on basically every, uh, place that you would [00:35:00] think it would be on.

So it's on iOS and the App store. It's on, uh, Google and the Google Play Store. It's on desktop, um, Mac, Linux, and Windows. So you can download it on any of those, uh, places, and then you can kind of link your accounts together as well, so you can have. You know, synchronization between what you know, the messages you send on your phone versus like your desktop clients.

They can sync the messages and everything can be kind of in the same place. That's something that we've seen a lot of messages, you know, that they might not have the best system to synchronize messages between mobile and, and, uh, desktop. And you need to have one client open at the same time. We didn't want that to be the user experience and we want it to be session to be as widely available as possible.

So there isn't any additional steps that you need to do to install session, although like if you want more privacy and you're using, you know, a locked down Linux system, you can download it that way. Or if you are using, you know, you are using Google and you want to [00:36:00] install the a PK directly and you don't want to go through the Google Play store.

You know, we have an option to download through asteroid or install the a PK directly. So it's again about that. Um, you know, I talked about, you know, providing the most privacy option and then also the option that people are probably going to use because they're familiar with it. So, session tries to do both, like, you know, we allow all the super privacy people to get it in the way that they get their applications, but also it's just on the app stores so you can download and start using it straight away.

Mehmet: Do I have to be connected to the Tour Network? Because again, maybe some people they would. 

Kee: No, no, like the entire, um, onion routing system. And if you think not everyone would be familiar with what onion routing is, right? Um, the simple way to think about it is most people understand what A VPN is that allows you to connect to another server, which changes your location.

Uh, onion routing is a more, kind of a more advanced version of VPN, where you're kind of chaining different. [00:37:00] Kind of PN service together. And there's added layers of encryption in there as well, um, which break up the trust assumptions. 'cause typically when you're using a VPN, you know, you're trusting the VPN provider and the onion routing adds in unrelated hops and additional encryption so that you don't actually have to trust a single operator in the network.

And that entire onion routing system in session is built into the application. So you don't need to download another application to get session working, you just download session. And you start using onion routing immediately. Um, and there's no setup involved in that, so that's really good from a ease of use perspective.

Mehmet: So the onboarding experience, the journey from, from downloading to, to signing up, uh, yeah. To get in into the network is, is so easy. Um, 

Kee: well, yeah, we, 

Mehmet: we spent 

Kee: so much time on onboarding as well, like getting that process optimized. I think we're actually, um, at a better level than most of the [00:38:00] other messaging applications, which require a phone number because you know, in most of the other messaging applications, you enter your phone number, you have to get an SMS, then you have to type in the number and the SMS, and then you've got an account with session.

You just create the account and you can start sending messages immediately. You don't have to receive that text message verification. So I think we're actually faster. Now to onboard onto succession than some of the centralized messaging applications. 

Mehmet: Super cool. You know, like, uh, it's an annoying thing for me, especially when I get, uh, a new phone, for example.

I need to get my, um. You know, to, to convince, let's say WhatsApp or like the others like, hey, like this is the same number as just like now another phone. So, um, the authentication mechanism, I liked it. Um, you know, of course it provides the anonymity, which is we talked about and why it's important, the privacy.

But, you know, this user experience, I'm a little bit. Uh, uh, kind of, I'm not a designer by any means, but, you know, anything which enhance the [00:39:00] ui, ux, uh, you know, I, I, I fall in love with, with these like very frictionless experiences and, uh, very obvious, like you have that Kee Kee as we are almost come to an end.

Any final thought you want to share with us? And of course, it's a traditional question where people can get in touch. 

Kee: Yeah, I mean I think it's important for people to consider their privacy when they're using, uh, applications. I think a lot of people when they hear about privacy first, they kind of dive headfirst into it and they might get a bit overwhelmed with the amount of options that are out there.

You know, people will look to change their email service, their messaging service, their, you know, drive or like, you know, backup service. And if you try and change all of them at once, it can, you know, be overwhelming. I'd suggest like, if you are looking more into privacy. Try to just swap out one thing at a time.

So, you know, you may be thinking about email and how your privacy works there. Maybe you wanna switch to one of the providers, like [00:40:00] Proton Mail or, um, tutor I think is another one. Yeah. Um, you start there, you see how it works for you. If it works for you there, then you go to the next thing. So maybe it's messaging or maybe you want to think about, you know, how to back up your files using Google Drive or something like that.

Maybe you wanna look at a more private service there. So I'd say take it step by step. Um, I think session offers a really good option in the messaging space. Um, there's other options out there. Signal's really good if you're looking for something that's based on a phone number, but if you are looking for that maximum privacy, I think session is really good.

Uh, and that the best offering that's out there for that maximum level privacy. Um, in terms of how. To get in touch, I think like we're on Twitter, so, um, just look up session. If you just Google session, we're a really good, uh, ranking right now will be the first thing that shows up and that's where you can get the links to download all of the applications.

Um, if you're in the Google Play store, the app store, just search session and you'll find us with the green s uh, so 

Mehmet: yeah. Great. Of course, I [00:41:00] will make sure all the links, uh, so you can, uh, have it in the show notes if you're listening on your favorite podcasting app. If you're watching, of course you get it in the description.

Just, you know, as a side note, 'cause you mentioned, you know, about the shifting, so I think this is a startup idea. If someone is listening to me now, uh, make a migration tool from, you know, any, any traditional whatever. As you mentioned, mail, uh. Cloud storage messaging app, maybe from WhatsApp to, to, to session.

So, so this would be, would be a good business, I believe if you charge people to, to migrate your life from, you know, these public services to a more private service and. Jokes aside. Thank you very much, Keith, for, for, you know, this enlightening session. Um, I think it's an important topic and when I was reached out by, by your team, uh, you know, I get hooked because, you know, privacy, we discuss it all the time coming, uh, somehow from a cybersecurity background, you know, I was both as a consultant and then later from business [00:42:00] perspective, we talk a lot about privacy.

Uh, both in businesses and on personal side. And I always say, if you protect your data on a personal level, you would apply this. Try to apply it on a business level also as well. So it was a very good, uh, you know, enlightening, uh, I would say experience to me to speak to you Kee. And of course, I gonna onboard on session very soon.

Good. Yeah. Thank you. And as I, you know, this is the way I end my episode. This is for the. Audience we mentioned the links will be in the show notes or if you're watching on YouTube, if you just discovered this podcast by luck. Thank you for passing by. I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, so give me a favor, subscribe and share it with your friends and colleagues as you try, as you see, like we're trying to make an impact to try to get like new concepts.

Important topics to discuss, and I would like to be able to reach to as much people as possible. And if you are one of the people who keeps coming again and again, thank you very much for the support, for the messages, for [00:43:00] keeping the podcast this year. I know maybe you are bored from me now. In 2025, we get on the top 200 podcast chart every week in multiple countries.

Of course, we keep changing countries. I'm pushing for some Australia. Came before Kee, by the way. So we, so we, we did it in Australia. We did it in New Zealand. I'm looking for some new countries to see on the top 200 us. I'm waiting for you and I'm waiting also for other countries as well. And thank you also for all the people who supported on the book Launch from Nowhere to Next, which is now available on all you know, uh, websites, wherever you get your books on Amazon mainly.

And again, stay tuned for a new episode very soon. Thank you. Bye-bye.