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Purism’s Librem One suite of apps offers ad-free, privacy-focused chat, email, social media (for a fee)

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Gadgets

Purism sells a line of laptops that ship with GNU/Linux software and which support privacy features including physical kill switches for the cameras, microphones, and wireless cards. The social purpose corporation is also developing the Librem 5 smartphone, which should ship with a Linux-based operating system later this year.

Now Purism is moving beyond hardware and launching a set of apps and services that it says respect your privacy.

The Librem One suite of apps includes a Chat app, a Mail app, a VPN, and a social networking app. They don’t include ads of any sort. They offer end-to-end encryption. And Purism says it doesn’t track user data.

But since Purism isn’t making any money off your data, they’re asking you to pony up — Librem One is a subscription service.

Read more

Purism Announces Librem One Privacy-Focused Software Suite

  • Purism Announces Librem One Privacy-Focused Software Suite for Android and iOS

    Tired of the privacy issues with the big tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple, Purism decided to launch a suite of apps that truly respects user's privacy, doesn't track users' activity, do not show ads, nor analyze or sell your data. The Librem One suite aims to offers alternatives to your most used apps on iOS and Android.

    Librem One currently consists of an end-to-end encrypted chat app, end-to-end encrypted email client, end-to-end encrypted VPN solution, as well as a social network platform for everyone. In the near future, the Librem One suite will also include end-to-end encrypted cloud storage, payments, and phone service for the upcoming Librem 5 Linux phone by Purism.

Purism Launches Librem One, a Suite of Privacy-Protecting...

  • Purism Launches Librem One, a Suite of Privacy-Protecting, No-Track, No-Ad Apps and Services

    They give me a script, show me a rough cut of the footage, and I record a few lines. Easy peasy.

    The only problem? The commercial was for something that I think is a really great idea. And, the finished commercial gave me a serious case of the giggles. Yet I couldn't tell anyone about it. I was sworn to secrecy.

    For a person who runs his mouth for a living, secrecy isn't always so easy. Keeping my big, dumb mouth shut was downright painful. Painful, I say!

    Luckily, I can now, as of today, spill the beans without getting into trouble.

    Purism has just launched an online service it has dubbed "Librem One", which is, as Purism calls it, a "suite of apps and services designed to provide users with convenient alternatives to Big Tech products".

    There are two components of Librem One that are offered free of cost (or, at least, choose your own price): Chat and Social Media.

    The chat component—the aptly named "Librem Chat"—is built on Matrix (which I am also a big fan of) and includes end-to-end encrypted text chat plus audio and video chatting. And, since it's built on Matrix, it has access to all the other users on Matrix out there. Which may not be as big of a user pool as, say, Hangouts or something, but the user base is growing. Quickly.

    The Social Media component is built using Activity Pub and Mastodon (a federated, free software social network system).

    I want to pause right there a moment, because this is really interesting to me.

More Librem One coverage

  • Purism Announces "Librem One" As Their Privacy-Minded Software Suite

    Purism is now in the service business of selling privacy-minded software services to compete with the likes of Google's G-Suite, Twitter, and other platforms. Today the company rolled out Librem One as this new software effort.

    The Librem One services currently consist of encrypted chat, encrypted email, encrypted VPN, and social media support. These services aren't ad-driven, feature no tracking, and respect user privacy. With no advertisements involved, the cost of the Librem One suite starts out at $7.99 USD per month.

    In addition to the initial Chat / Mail / Tunnel (VPN) / Social components, eventually under their subscription plan they tend to offer encrypted cloud storage, encrypted backups, encrypted contact syncing and storage, cryptographic payments, and a pay-as-you-go phone service. These future services are contingent upon enough individuals subscribing/donating to make them a reality.

  • Purism’s Librem One and Mozilla’s WebThings focus on privacy for phones and home automation

    Purism unveiled a “Librem One” service that brings privacy focused, encrypted chat, email, VPN, and social networking to Android and iOS phones. Meanwhile, Mozilla launched a privacy-focused WebThings Gateway 0.8 home automation stack for the Pi.

    Purism, the company behind the Linux-based, open source Librem laptops and upcoming Librem 5 smartphone, has launched a Librem One “ethical services bundle” via a $7.99 per month subscription service. Librem One offers privacy-focused, encryption protected alternatives to typical mobile communications apps found on Android and iOS smartphones.

The New Librem One Services

  • The New Librem One Services

    Our bundled, all-in-one services are ethical, respectful of your digital rights and concerned about your privacy – something we guess has been on your mind lately – or maybe for quite some time now. It’s in everyone’s mind, these days: we love the convenience of digital, internet-based services, but we worry about what we read and watch in the news. We love communicating, but communication between peers and family is meant to be private. It’s meant to be safe, and yet we are being harvested. We put our loved ones at risk by emailing them, by tagging their name. Interacting with the ones you love is not meant to serve other’s interests or to exploit you in any way.

    At Purism, we are a Social Purpose Company. We don’t exploit you (and, by our own philosophy and contract, we can’t exploit you). We don’t offer advertising services to third parties. We don’t track users. We don’t look at, sell, or share anything – we offer a simple subscription model.

Underscoring Our Transparency: First Librem One Bug Report

  • Underscoring Our Transparency: First Librem One Bug Report

    We are super excited about our Librem One launch, if you can’t tell, but to make things even more exciting, we also have hit a different milestone with the service: our first security bug! We believe in transparency in general and especially when it comes to security. Security bugs happen in all software and services and our stance is the best approach is not just to address security issues as soon as possible but to be up front and alert you to security issues as soon as possible.

    One of our keen community members rae discovered a severe security vulnerability in the Librem Chat service that allowed them to login to our chat server as any user. This is obviously a serious vulnerability and so we immediately shut down that chat server while we investigated.

By Joey Sneddon

  • Librem One Campaign Wants to Help De-Google Your Life

    Purism, the privacy-orientated Linux device company, has launched a “bundle” of mobile apps and services for Android and iOS.

    Purism, perhaps best known for the Librem 5 Linux phone crowdfunding campaign, has launched a new initiative offering “privacy protecting, no-track, no-ads” apps and services for mobile users.

    Wondering what apps and services are available, who they’re aimed at, what they can do and how much it’ll cost? Keep reading for all the details!

Purism’s New Offering is a Dream Come True...

  • Purism’s New Offering is a Dream Come True for Privacy Concerned People

    Purism, the privacy focused company behind Librem laptops and smartphone, has unveiled a new suite of services to further serve the privacy aware people.

    You probably have heard about Purism. It’s a ‘Social Purpose Corporation’ that has created the PureOS Linux distribution, Librem series of laptops and Librem5 Linux-based smartphone. All of their products are focused on protecting your privacy and giving you entire control over your data.

    Purism has increased its offering for privacy and security concerned people with a new bundle of service, called Librem One.

Purism Librem One and How Purism Works Upstream and Gives Back

  • Purism Librem One Suite Launched With Privacy-Focused Apps

    Librem Chat, VPN and Mail use end to end encryption for improved privacy. Librem Social uses ActivityPub protocol which is based on the ActivityStreams 2.0 data format. The W3C itself recommends Activitypub.

    All these apps from Purism Librem One are privacy-focused and do not keep track of the user or their data in any way. Future apps from developers including Cloud Storage, Phone Service, and Payment Services are also coming. All of them will feature end-to-end encryption, thus following the company’s motto: “We don’t look at your junk.”

    The annual subscription of Librem One Suit costs $71.91 or $7.99 a month which is 25% more expensive than the yearly plan.

  • How Purism Works Upstream and Gives Back

    One aspect in free software (and its copyleft licensing) is the benefit of releasing software for others to use as long as the same licensing terms are used.

    Purism has a long history of giving back and working with upstreams and continues to release everything Purism authors under free software licenses in accordance to Purism’s Social Purpose Corporation Articles of Incorporation.

    In light of our Librem One launch, and since we use free software for our clients and services, it shouldn’t be a surprise that we use free software considering our commitment not just to free software but to open standards. There is so much we want to tell you about Librem One over the coming weeks from various design decisions, policies, and upstream software that we couldn’t address all at once on launch day. To start, let’s talk about the free software that we use in Librem One.

Librem One Affected By Nasty Security Bug On Launch Day

  • Librem One Affected By Nasty Security Bug On Launch Day, Acknowledges Rebranded Apps

    Yesterday Purism launched the Librem One suite of services that initially consists of a privacy-minded, but even with priding themselves on security, there ended up being a nasty launch-day security issue uncovered. The fact that their offered software was quietly re-branded open-source software also rubbed some users the wrong way.

    The security issue yesterday affected Librem Chat and allowed any user into any account on the service due to a typo in the Matrix.org code. The issue ended up being reported and after some brief downtime taken care of, as outlined via the Purism blog. While it happened on launch day, so far there are less than two thousand users, so the overall impact isn't that much and it doesn't appear the issue was exploited for nefarious intent.

Opt-IN, No Ads, and No Tracking Solve a Lot of Problems

  • Opt-IN, No Ads, and No Tracking Solve a Lot of Problems in Society

    There are a lot of issues with social giants and we are hearing about them daily, from Cambridge Analytica manipulating people through social media feeds, through silicon valley social companies censoring people, to algorithms that discriminate you and the content you see based on your friends or posts or likes.

    It’s also a common question from the press to Silicon Valley social giants “what are you going to do about certain content on your private platform?” and those social giants keep incorrectly answering that question with “we will censor things on our closed platform based on an evolving policy.” But this is missing the larger more menacing point.

New Librem Mail

  • Introducing The New Librem Mail

    By using OpenPGP, the best-in-class cryptography. And just like every other client Purism offers as part of Librem One, Librem Mail uses free software-based clients (such as Librem Mail on Android, based on K-9 Mail), across all platforms. This ensures that rights (and freedom) of people using it are protected when third party verification of privacy and security protections is confirmed.

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