Silent Phone App Reviews

Is not so funny as it sounds....

Bugtastic. When the new icons rolled out I resisted until the separate messaging app got shelved. I still dont like the new icons but at least things worked for a while. Now with this latest update the navigation really lags and pretty much just hangs or crashes the app. For at least a couple years now Ive been a paid user, but this is still not an app I can get people who I communicate with every day onto. Encrypted mobile VOIP is hard beyond app developers control because we need bigger and faster pipes. I get that. But in the meantime at least give me an app that I can use over WiFi, and in a way that can be configured with iOS call forwarding such that anytime Im on WiFi incoming calls get forwarded to my Silent Circle number so I neednt give it out, and have a work-around for how the pipes arent such that one can use encryption on calls all the time. Make encrypted calls work as much as possible because otherwise the value is just in encrypted messaging and there are a lot of other freemium options out there that do that at least as well.

This app is giving an error message every time I try to sign up. Extremely poor usability already and I havent even entered the app

Text say delivered but arent being delivered. Tested several times, reset the app also re signed in and did everything possible that I could and its like the app text do not work

Please fix txt messages, two updates ago broke them and last update didnt address it. PLEASE THIS IS A PAID SUBSCRIPTION!

Ever since the inception of Silent Circle, Ive been waiting for them to crack this nut! Dependable encrypted communication is obviously a challenge but one Signal (Open Whisper Systems) has handled considerably better than Silent Circle (Silent Phone is the older product on iOS by the way). Silent Phone comms are fidgety, its app constantly going offline, text messages not being delivered, attachments not downloading or taking excessive time to process, call drops on Silent World are frequent. In addition the past few months have seen accounts experiencing technical trouble resulting in payments not being processed or Silent World minutes not being credited to accounts for extended blackout periods. Pros; - Peer to Peer (Content) Privacy - Encrypted Video calling - Silent World offers a unique calling facility with a phone number that can connect to and from regular phone lines (partly unencrypted) Cons; - Unreliable system which frequently fails to connect parties. - This includes text messaging which frequently fails to deliver or attach files in a timely, error free fashion (Granted, its come some distance from its early ghost messaging syndrome but still fails to meet the cut for a dependable system). - Backend Support quality is erratic. Mostly poor with no response for days or weeks or even longer. Also, SC now forces customers to communicate with them over virtual post cards i.e email, rather than over their own secure client or via their web portal. Quite a lapse for a company focussed on privacy minded users. Grey Area of Operation Silent Circle has made a marked shift from a consumer facing company to one focussed on the Enterprise. As it has done so, its privacy approach has taken a shift to a grey area of operation. - Ronin/ prepaid codes allowed users to buy/gift prepaid subscriptions with anonymity. As time progressed, the degree of anonymity shifted and now finally the codes are no longer available to purchase from their website. No communication whatsoever from the company on its shifting policy. - Meta Data Leakage in the app suggests Silent Circle is not so interested in preventing the identification of parties communicating with one another - Phil Zimmerman (key founder) said as much recently when he explained his vision silent phone is not for anonymous communications between parties but was focussed primarily on preventing eavesdropping on the content of conversations. - This distinction should alarm users who may believe they are partially protected from pattern analysis when communicating on Silent Phone eg journalists communicating with their confidential sources should understand preventing the identification of parties is NOT a Silent Circle mission statement rather protecting the content of the communication is their stated mission. - Their updated requirement for a valid credit card held on file (with the association it brings to the account) further adds to this glaring privacy nightmare. Conclusion Phil Zimmerman and Jon Callas years back pitched Silent Circle as a means for anyone on the planet to "whisper in the ear of another party across the face of the planet" ; they just didnt say that involved announcing whos whispering secrets to whom, where and when- all of which reveals a tremendous amount of information in itself. It would not be an exaggeration to say the individual users who backed and placed their faith in SCs early days have been relegated to second tier status. The resulting privacy back peddling has been unexplained, just left to be picked up like a trail of breadcrumbs stretching from National Harbor to their new Swiss HQ. Alternatives Signal (text and calling) from Open Whisper systems is both open source and considerably more reliable comms. Wickr (messaging only) reliability is high but is not open source. What youll miss Nothing much if your goal is to have dependable comms but Silent World is a useful additional to their package of services. Also, their peer to peer encrypted video calling has few competitors.

I worry about making phone calls back to the states when I travel for business. When I first heard about Silent Phone from a news article, I was skeptical. Nothing is ever as it seems in advertising. I’ve been using this for my business and personal communications now for a month. Getting started was a little tricky since you have to sign up on their website, but for a little over $10 a month I can send files back and forth to my office, send messages on status updates and even call my vendors who aren’t on the system. I wish there was a way to message more than one person at a time, but the trade-off is I knowing my words are not being snooped across the internet. I love the “burn” feature too, though I’m not certain that it is really deleted off all servers. The features I would like to see are voicemail or at least some way for people to contact me if I don’t answer right away, and group texts so I can update my team abroad.

Silent fees Absolutely NO functionality unless you pay monthly fee.

Able to make secure calls, and of course there is a nominal fee.....You get your own phone number, private, unlisted. And it is flawless. If there is a problem, just call or email the support team....they are very responsive. Having this app on my mobile phone gives me two lines, this being the secure line.