Dcentral1 by John McAfee
Dcentral1 is aiming to put that control back in people’s hands. The app functions on the same kernel that is the core of McAfee’s future product D-Central. D- Central of course is the product that was famously proclaimed as an anti-NSA device for the masses, designed to thwart rampant data collection by decentralizing the connective nature of your client device. That hardware-based product is still forthcoming scheduled for now for later in the year. Cognisant is but one piece of the full-on suite that McAfee is building because he sees the threat as far more than addressing these over-reaching apps, there are other threats to privacy and security out there that include the NSA.
“Info collection is everywhere and people have just assumed that all these apps are on the up and up – that’s a big problem. When you ask yourself what a chat app is doing with built-in capabilities to silently make calls and put out other information, it’s a pretty dire picture. It’s all about taking information, accessing your location, your camera and we’re losing our privacy. There are many companies doing this, but that’s not the only threat, we’ve talked about the NSA but many governments are doing this as well. There are persistent rumors and documented concerns about how much information is leaking to countries like China and Russia. It would be surprising if they weren’t taking data at will at the highest levels possible right now, so why would it be any different for these applications. There are also cybercriminals out there that live off of information they gather, it’s a big target. When I launched McAfee Associates 27 years ago, the world of PC security was basically the Wild West and no one was really aware of the threat and the very real dangers we still deal with today. We are in that exact same spot again.”
The timing of this is rather interesting as people are still reacting to news barely over a week old that had the NSA and GCHQ mining the popular phone apps that were leaking information, such as the incredibly successful and widespread game app Angry Birds. The agencies have put systems in place to collect this commercial data that was freely given up by the applications. ‘Leaky’ apps translates on one level to outbound information that is granted by permission apps – a perfect use case scenario for Dcentral1 it would seem.
