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Protecting our user’s security and privacy in the age of AI

Written by Hauke Gierow | Aug 2, 2023 10:14:00 PM

At Wire, we believe that privacy and security are fundamental values – and that they should be protected, without any hesitation. This is why we collect as little data as possible – and strictly only collect information that we need to provide our services to you.

Our headquarter is located in Berlin, Germany and almost all of our development takes place here. This means that we are regulated under the GDPR when it comes to the usage of personal information. Although GDPR can be bureaucratic in its structure, we still believe it is a big asset, as we can prove to our users that we are compliant with the strictest standards.

Security and Privacy are inseparably linked

However, the recent developments in artificial intelligence pose new questions to data protection and data collection practices, as the training of AI models usually demands the analysis of large datasets. We want to take this moment to reiterate to you that our pledge towards minimizing data collection lives on in the age of AI. We do not, and will never, compromise the confidentiality of your conversations.

“Providing security for us also means giving privacy to our users”, says Sascha Haase, VP Product at Wire. “Our encryption works according to the Zero-Knowledge paradigm, so we are technically unable to see any content of our user’s communication. This is by design, and the only way to assure that participants can communicate with assured security.”

End-to-End encryption is not optional at Wire

Wire encrypts all conversations and all other types of data transmission end-to-end. This means that we as a provider are technically unable to take a look at any of your communications in cleartext. Unlike other providers, end-to-end encryption is not a setting that is dependent on the user’s preferences but is deeply ingrained into the product. It cannot be switched off.

Wire can be hosted either on-premises or in the cloud. When Wire is set up in an on-premises instance that is managed by the customer we receive zero data about usage patterns. And even for our cloud customers we are minimizing data collection as much as possible and only maintain basic log files for a maximum of 72 hours.