Dust Review
They say that the advent of the Internet has made the world a smaller place, but has it made the world a safer place? We have a wealth of online communication platforms at our disposal which allows us to interact with people over unbelievable distances in very ingenious ways, but at the same time, our privacy is always under threat, and our online presence is essentially very vulnerable.
Hackers and crackers have become smarter. Therefore, cybersecurity has had to scale itself accordingly to meet each new wave of challenge. In the domain of online sexting apps, Dust has managed to rise above the crowd and distinguish itself with its encrypted communication and "dusting off" of messages, even on the recipient's phone. Let's review this interesting application in greater detail.
Introduction
Dust is an online communication platform which caters to 13-year-olds and above with instant encrypted messaging and the ability to interact with people without "leaving a digital footprint," i.e. without leaving any conversation records, either on your phone or your recipient's.
Other than these novel additions, it is a generic chat application which allows you to make friends, form groups, have followers and send "blasts"; the latter allows you to send texts, photos and audios to all of your friends. Its acceptance has been slow, which is not a surprise considering how saturated the market for online chatting platforms is.
Features
The Blast feature allows you to send textual, graphical and other forms of media to all of your friends and followers. You can even form a specific group of friends to receive certain blasts. This involves a couple of touches. Therefore, it's a very smooth process. You also have the option to mute blasts from certain users so that you don't receive any more blasts from them.
Secondly, the messages exchanged on this platform are encrypted end-to-end. Every message that you send is secured with a 128-bit AES encryption system which is further fortified by a 2048-bit RSA system.
Messages that you receive or send are deleted in 20 to 100 seconds, depending on the length. If the recipient does not view your message within 24 hours, the message will be rendered permanently deleted.
Finally, you can't take any screenshots of the conversations. Even if you somehow do so, the names are removed thereby rendering the conversation without context.
Cost
The app is completely free to download and is available on Windows, Android and iOS.
Pros and cons
The positive points of this platform pertain to its excellent encryption model and disabling of screenshots, both of which constitute user security and maintenance of privacy.
However, on the flipside, it is targeting a very small group of users indeed. Unless you are dealing in secretive business negotiations or any other shady matter, you won't be motivated to use it, especially when there is already a wealth of messaging apps out there. The user base of Dust is embarrassingly small, and it seems unlikely ever to take off.
Furthermore, a message disappearing every 20 seconds is more of an annoyance for the ordinary person than an advantage. There are times when there is the need to refer to previous conversations with a person, and in any case, we hardly have enough time on our hands to check messages instantly. There is the option to pin messages that you want to refer to later, but that's just a hassle.