Lockify: How to Securely Send Information Without the Pain of PGP

Have you ever sent a credit card number, bank account info, password or other sensitive information by email and felt that familiar sense of apprehension as you clicked on the “Send” button? If you have, then it was for good cause. Information like this could be intercepted in any number of ways, from packet sniffing to someone other than your intended recipient on the other end accessing that email account.

Lockify, a so-called Bit.ly or Twitter for secure communication, gives users a quick and simple way to send sensitive information over the Internet while making sure it gets where it needs to without being seen by anyone in-between.

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The company presented at the LAUNCH conference today and showed off the simple security solution, wowing the judges across the board. Sure, you could use something like PGP, but this requires both users on both ends to be clued-in on how to do that. To say the very least, that’s not common.

Lockify breaks it down simply – enter a message to be encrypted and then set a level of security. You can ask a question you think only the person on the other end would know, require that person to log into Gmail (if they have a Gmail account) to authenticate or even authenticate using their phone. By entering their phone number, they will get an SMS with a code to open the encrypted message.

After you set the encryption, you’re given a short URL. This URL can be sent as a link in chat, email or by Facebook message directly from the Lockify page. Beyond that, Lockify provides an API, so this service can be directly integrated into other services, making security simple for third-party integration.

Lockify is currently launching in private beta, so you can sign up to try the service out by providing an email. The company says that it plans on going beyond the standard text-based messaging in the near future, with encrypted files. It also plans on releasing a “LockifyMe” feature for companies looking to receive encrypted information from their customers.

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