A fair question
“How do you know it’s actually encrypted?”
Someone asked us this to our face, and it is the best question you can ask about any app that holds your family’s things. Here is the honest answer, no computer science degree required.
The short version
- 1
Your group is locked on your phone, before anything reaches us.
Your contacts, your photos, your plans get scrambled on your device first. We only ever keep the scrambled version. Your class is yours.
- 2
A few things stay readable, and we would rather tell you than let you assume.
The email you sign in with is one, because that is how invites and logins work. That is the honest list. Everything about the group itself is locked.
- 3
You don’t have to take our word for it.
The code that does the locking is out in the open. Anyone who cares to look can. And we didn’t wait to be asked: we had our encryption reviewed and published everything it found.
We had it reviewed, and we published the whole thing
Most apps ask you to just trust them. We would rather show you. So the encryption at the heart of Group Space was put through a careful security review, and we published the results in full, including the short list of things we are still improving. No app is ever finished, and pretending otherwise would be its own kind of dishonest.
What the review found
No critical flaws, and no broken locks. A handful of smaller improvements, each one written down, each one on our list. You can read every word of it, the good and the unfinished.
Why bother?
Because the free apps for your kid’s class usually pay for themselves by reading the room, and we decided not to build that. Doing it this way is harder and it costs more. Showing our work is the only way to prove we actually did it. You shouldn’t have to trust an app with your family. Now you don’t have to.
Group Space is a private space for your class, team, or troop. Ad-free, no trackers, and the part that keeps it private is out in the open for anyone who cares to look.