MySudo is Here (just in time)

Finally! After a lot of hard work by the Anonyome team, I am pleased to announce that MySudo version 0.9 has been released to the Apple App Store!

Son of SudoApp

We began this journey at Anonyome Labs in 2014 with one goal: give users absolute control over their online personal information and identity. We wrote lots of words to explain why it was needed back then but, I think given all the recent headlines, everyone now understands the risks and ramifications of not having this control. Clearly, Exhibits A and B are Facebook and Google, but there are so many more — and it’s reasonable to feel powerless to do anything about it. At Anonyome, we just don’t agree with that sentiment. And while Facebook is getting the public beating this time around, trust me when I say Google is more worrisome. More on that next time.

Despite the overwhelming odds, the feelings of learned helplessness, and the powers of digital addiction, we at Anonyome have been hard at work on solutions that allow people to enjoy all the benefits of our digital world, while protecting themselves from the dangers — obvious or obscure. We’re devoted to building the solutions that empower “normal folks” with the tools that give them control, choice and convenience to navigate the digital world safely and securely. This is what MySudo is all about.

We started with a few fundamental principles that are found in our Privacy Policy:

(From November 2016)

Summary:

• We built our apps with a single intent: Give the user control. This philosophy guides everything we do.
• We make every effort to not ask you for personally identifiable information. We don’t want it and you should not have to give it to us to take advantage of our offerings.
• You are not required to register anything with us that might be tied back to your identity; this means no mobile number to pass on, no email, no gender, no birthday — nothing that can be used, directly or indirectly, to identify you.
• We only collect data about how our app performs, which areas are more or less favored by users, and other performance-based metrics. We do this to improve our product and services and we will never sell that data to third parties. Period.
• There is no “God View” in our system. Even where a location service is turned on (e.g. to select local phone numbers), we have no way — nor any desire — to pinpoint any particular user.

We wrote the above almost two years ago when we launched SudoApp. Now, as then, we continue to believe that this is core in what we do. When we launched SudoApp 1.0, we were relatively new to the communications and messaging market. But our agenda was simply to give our users the ability to control and organize their various roles, or identities, as they searched, shopped or socialized in the digital world. A few key design decisions that we made then still hold true today:

1. We don’t know who you are unless you tell us. When you download our app, there isn’t a username/password, mobile number, or “login with Facebook/Google” requirement. We call this “zero attribution” and it simply means that we leverage all the great things about cryptography without burdening our users with all the technical complexity. It’s very simple: first-time users have what’s called a “public-private key pair” generated on their device. The public key is sent up to our cloud and only allows us to know there’s a device that has SudoApp/MySudo on it. The private key — which never, ever leaves the user’s device — allows any/all the encrypted content we may store to be sent to that device. This is how we know to send a call, message or email to the right Sudo identity. Other than that, we have no idea who that user (e.g. “carbon-based life form”) is. Period.
2. Wherever possible, we encrypt everything. Anything inside the MySudo ecosystem (sometimes referred to as a “walled garden”) is encrypted end-to-end.
3. Anything that goes outside that walled garden (e.g. an email from MySudo to gmail.com), is still not attributable. Sure, the glassholes from Google will try to pin your IP address, but they will still be unsure if it’s you. More on this later, but a quick and easy way to obfuscate this is to always use a VPN.
4. We don’t keep data any longer than we have to. We call this “zero knowledge” and it’s an important filter for our security, operations and support teams as we make decisions about how long to store data. Our standard for most data elements is 24 hours; in cases where it’s longer, it is driven by our need to provide service and support that is reasonably expected from our users. As a reminder, that data is encrypted when a user is in the Sudo network, and unattributable when out-of-network.
5. A personal Sudo is a critical construct for all our apps. Just as we wear many hats, take on many roles, and behave in different ways for a given context in the analog world, a Sudo Identity is a way to manage these increasingly complex relationships — while protecting one from the dangers of today’s personal information orgy in the digital world. Rather than be tracked by one mobile number, one email address or one profile, MySudo is giving our users the first tool to allow them to NOT have to do this — without being overly nerdy (we hope), complex, or filled with unnecessary steps.

SudoApp 1.x and 2.x were the evolutions of those decisions and we learned a lot about what users liked and hated. A few key learnings:

1. Free is fine, but free seekers will break your back when you’re not monetizing their data. I paid a lot of Ivy League tuition to learn this.
2. Less is more. While we make subconscious decisions all day, every day, in the analog world — about what, with whom and how to share personal information — making that easy to do in the digital world required a lot of hard design decisions to reduce the mental load we were placing on our users. Think about the last time you met the painter, someone at your child’s school, or someone at a conference. Did you immediately share your birthdate, home address, mobile number and family situation? Likely (hopefully) not, but online those facts can be derived — usually for free — in a simple 2-second query.
3. It’s easy to have one identity per app instance. It’s very difficult, however, to have multiple identities — all without requiring personally identifiable information, and that can be used interchangeably in real-time.

Why MySudo?

Many have asked why we didn’t simply upgrade SudoApp with a new version, instead of releasing an entirely new app. My answer is straightforward: sometimes you have to raze the building to build something 10x better. That was the case with MySudo. To accommodate our need to scale, include the kind of features we wanted in the future, and integrate (hint) future capabilities, we needed to start fresh. The great news about this is that we will have a migration path for existing SudoApp users who want to bring over important information. Stayed tuned on that. In the meantime, SudoApp will still be available to use.

Having said that, I would encourage every new user and SudoApp experimenter to move to the MySudo app as soon as possible, especially if migration isn’t important. As we roll out out additional updates, you’ll be very happy you did.

What’s Next?

As with any major release, there’s a bit of an exhale here at Anonyome. We’ve been working very hard on this product, but that isn’t the only thing we’ve been hard at work on. The second half of 2018 is going to be very exciting for our users and for the market in general. After four years in which some would say we’ve been “tilting at windmills,” we’re excited to see the veil lifted. It’s time for people to take back control. We have to stop relying on the Googles and Governments of the world and become independent information curators. If we spent as much time thinking about sources, motivations and “following the money” as we do when shopping for organic food, picking the right photo filter and ordering elaborate coffee blends, we would see that now, more than ever, is the time for action. At Anonyome, we’ve been on the hill readying the horses. Now we’re ready to lead the charge…to take back control.

Finally…

Thank you for humoring my rant. If you like MySudo app, by all means, please let us know what’s working for you. And if you don’t, we want to know that, too. This is a mission for me and for us, so we want to hear from you!

Here’s my email address: steve@mysudo.com.

— Steve