BitTorrent Bleep App Will Offer Private Instant Messaging

Now that the NSA has everyone second-guessing themselves before hitting the Send button, BitTorrent is jumping into the chat game. The service credited with enabling record-breaking piracy of HBO’s Game of Thrones announced Bleep alpha, a chat service for Windows. The chat’s draw is that it’s meant to keep your chat safe from prying eyes by offering end-to-end encryption and BitTorrent’s distributed data transfer technology, instead of servers. Even BitTorrent can’t see what you’re saying, the company says. 

In fact, that’s where the service gets its name. “Well, basically, we never see your messages or metadata. As far as we’re concerned, anything you say is “bleep” to us,” a BitTorrent spokesperson wrote on the company blog. If the service is indeed snoop-proof, it would be handy for everything from innocuous chats with friends to sensitive conversations between journalists and sources – or people with bad intentions. Like just about any privacy-focused service, Bleep has the potential to be a double-edged sword.

Right now, Bleep is in “Pre-Alpha” and is only available on Windows 7/8, but BitTorrent expects to expand to other platforms as the service matures. You can request an invite if you want to give it a whirl.