The instant messaging app is not yet as popular as its competitors. But Olvid is making a place for itself in the very closed sector of encrypted and secure applications – the perfect opportunity to take an interest in the origin of its name.
Be there “ world’s safest messenger » : this is what Olvid boasts about. The instant messaging service may not yet be very well known compared to its main competitors, it is true that it accumulates qualities. Encrypted conversations, protected metadata, no server: the app meets many expectations and ranks among the best services in terms of security. It is these technical specificities that make Olvid chosen by the Raid to ensure the internal communications of the police unit.
But Olvid is above all a French app — and it’s not every day that Numerama devotes an article in its tech names section to an app. made in France. It is therefore all the more funny that the name of this one comes from a Spanish word.
A word with Spanish origins
How to name an app whose purpose is to secure exchanges? The question does not necessarily have an obvious answer. To stand out from its main competitors, Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram, Olvid has chosen to be original.
The company revealed the details on Twitter. Olvid comes from the verb olvidar, which means forget in Spanish. ” Because the right to be forgotten is important on Olvid: a message deleted on either side can never be restored “. Smart.
It’s not just this detail that the name refers to, but also all the other technical features of the app. Olvid only collects little information about users: there is no need to provide a phone number when registering, the app just needs an internet connection to work. The app also never asks for access to the phone book, which means that contact information is not transmitted to servers.
Conversations are also end-to-end encrypted by default using the SHA-256 hash function and an AES-256 block cipher algorithm — strong protocols. In addition to conversations, Olvid encrypts their metadata to provide even more protection.
The story doesn’t say if the founders of Olvid have Spanish origins – but the name of the app does. And in terms of the right to be forgotten, we can say that Olvid seems rather to have succeeded in his bet.