that Microsoft was granted during the Trump administration. AWS posted revenues of $13.5 billion last quarter, up 32% year-on-year, with net income of $8.1 billion.Īmazon’s purchase of a messaging product geared at providing secure services to government bodies is coming at a time when the company continues to be embroiled in a dispute around the JEDI contract, a $10 billion deal to provide services to the U.S. Meanwhile, Amazon’s cloud and enterprise division, AWS, has been a juggernaut for the e-commerce and services giant. Wickr had raised just under $60 million in funding, according to PitchBook data (it also notes a valuation of under $30 million but that seems to be a very old estimate). It claims to be the only “collaboration service” that meets security criteria set out by the NSA.ĪWS will continue operating Wickr as is, and offer its services to AWS customers, “effective immediately,” notes a blog post from Stephen Schmidt, the VP and CISO for AWS, announcing the news.įinancial terms were not disclosed in the short announcement. The company has just announced that it has acquired secure communications service Wickr - a messaging app that has geared itself towards providing services to government and military groups and enterprises. Wickr’s, whose backers have included the CIA and controversial private security firm Blackwater, had also become a hub for drug dealers forced off the dark web by the closures of notorious illegal goods marketplaces such as Silk Road, according to reports.Amazon’s cloud services giant Amazon Web Services ( AWS) is getting into the encrypted messaging business. In June, NBC News, citing court documents, law enforcement and activists, said Amazon had done “little” to proactively address the problem. The shutdown announcement follows reports that the company’s free messaging app had allowed criminals to exchange images of child sexual abuse. “After careful consideration, we will be concentrating Wickr’s focus on securing our business and public sector customers’ data and communications with AWS Wickr and Wickr Enterprise, and have decided to discontinue our consumer product, Wickr Me,” Amazon said, adding that the company was working on allowing Wickr customers to securely communicate with individuals outside of their organization. Wickr’s other products, which are geared toward government agencies, military organizations and enterprises, won’t be impacted. The shutdown will only affect the consumer-facing version of Wickr, which has become popular among journalists and whistleblowers looking to send end-to-end encrypted and self-destructing messages. Amazon says the app will stop accepting new user registrations on Decembefore it’s discontinued completely the following year. In a post published Friday, Amazon said that Wickr Me will shut down for good on December 31, 2023. Wickr was founded in 2011 and became one of the first mainstream end-to-end encrypted messaging apps, until it was acquired by Amazon’s cloud services giant Amazon Web Services in 2021. Secure communications provider Wickr has announced that it will shutter its free encrypted messaging app, Wickr Me, next year.
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