Questions

No. SHIFROM needs no phone number, no email and no real name. Your identity keys are created on your phone and never leave it.

You do not need a separate VPN to reach the network: the ways around blocking are built into the app. It can connect over Direct WSS, REALITY, Tor or a REST fallback, and when one route is blocked, another takes over.

Tested by the founder on specific networks and dates. This is not a guarantee against every block: REALITY is not an anonymity system and may not bypass every DPI policy.

No, and we do not claim it is. End-to-end encryption hides what you write, and sealed-sender-style envelopes reduce what the relay learns about the sender. The relay can still see timing, message sizes, authenticated sessions and delivery destinations.

Ghost mode sends everything over Tor only (text only) and never silently falls back to a direct connection. The limits are documented in the threat model.

Only the person you write to. Messages are end-to-end encrypted with a Double Ratchet implementation over libsodium, ED25519 identity keys and X3DH session setup. The relay never sees the text.

The custom protocol composition has not yet had an independent security audit.

SHIFROM needs no phone number, encrypts every one-to-one chat end to end by default, and has ways around blocking built in. It is also younger: there is no supported public release and no independent audit yet. The comparison sets it next to Signal, Telegram, Session, SimpleX, Briar and Threema.

Not yet. SHIFROM is in Alpha 2: the source code and tagged development snapshots are on GitHub (the oldest, Alpha 1, comes with a historical test APK), but there is no supported public release or open beta. Public builds come with Beta; watch the releases on GitHub to hear first.

Not yet. Android comes first; iOS and a web version are planned. The shared core is ready for iOS; the native iPhone app still has to be built. Donations fund that work.

Not yet. An independent security audit is planned before v1.0 and is one of the things donations pay for. Until then, the source, the threat model and the known issues are public so anyone can check them.

Yes, under AGPL-3.0-or-later. The code is on GitHub with a mirror on Codeberg, along with the threat model, known issues and architecture decisions.

They are not ready for everyday use. Group chats are in progress and still being hardened; voice calls are experimental. One-to-one text messages and encrypted voice notes work today. See the roadmap.

SHIFROM is developed independently and maintained by Willen LLC (Wyoming, USA). It does not sell user data. It is funded by donations and is open to grants and pre-seed investment that keep the open-source license and the published security boundaries.