How we think about privacy
At Console, we're dedicated to trustless design and hold privacy as a fundamental right.
Our goal is to build the world's best all-in-one community platform.
We take a forward-thinking approach to privacy and are proud of our progress, yet we recognize there's more work to be done to achieve our own high standards.
Here, I'll detail our current status and future plans, providing a clear roadmap of our journey.
1. Where We Are Today:
Web3 Wallet Login (Optional): Users may choose to log in with a Web3 wallet, avoiding the need to share their email or phone number, thereby remaining completely anonymous. This login method is entirely optional, but available for all users.
Pushing power away from Console, and to the edges (aka. the communities): Community admins choose the required contact methods for joining their communities. For instance, one community might require a phone number, while another only requires Web3 wallets and ENS names. At Console, we remain neutral, striving to offer multiple options for community admins.
Minimal Data Collection: We collect only the essential data needed to operate Console. Soon we we publish a list of all the data we collect.
Encryption — Console chat data is NOT currently end-to-end encrypted. Which means we are currently at the same quality privacy as Slack and Discord. Be we plan to do better. By 2025 we will launch end-to-end encryption for DMs, groups and private channels.
2. Where we are going in the future
Improved encryption (coming soon) — We plan to encrypt all email addresses, and phone numbers. We are also considering client-side encryption for sensitive data at rest.
Client-side encryption — Console is built on the Matrix.org network, which makes it easy for us to turn on end-to-end encryption for our chats. At the moment we have the infrastructure built and are running this encryption in beta, we're just waiting for the best time to integrate these features into our UI so we can deliver them to all Console users.
3. We're bringing Web3 to the World
At Console, we offer a progressive approach to building Console as trustlessly as possible.
Users have the choice. We expect most users will log into Console with their phone number (the easiest login). But that same user also has the option to add a web wallet, ENS name, or other on-chain data to secure their account with private keys.
Users also have the option to later remove their phone number from our database and thus go fully decentralized.
As with many of our choices here at Console, we opt to push this power to the users and communities to decide. We're working to make the onboarding flow as easy as possible and hope Console can be the gateway to onboard the next ten million people to the new internet.
Further reading
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