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A group of computer security experts want to turn that model on its head with Wickr, a new mobile app that they hope will set a new standard for how personal data is disseminated. Wickr’s motto: The Internet is forever. Your private conversations don’t need to be. The app, which became available in Apple’s iTunes store on Tuesday, lets users transmit texts, photos and videos through secure and anonymous means previously reserved for the likes of the military and intelligence operatives. Text messages, photos and videos sent via Wickr are secured using military-grade encryption and never stored. The service camouflages user names and other identifiable information, such as a phone’s identification number, by appending several random digits to each value, then mashing them up with a mathematical algorithm, a process security experts refer to as “salting” and “hashing.” Wickr hashes and salts that information several times and only stores the encoded result.

“Because SCVNGR has all this premium activity (challenges, not just checkins), our location-based activity items get surfaced far more often in Facebook’s () activity algorithms, meaning that we get more placement, comments and likes,” says CEO Seth Priebatsch.When coupled with SCVNGR’s previous Facebook Places integration features and do-it-yourself rewards system, the application completes the loop and turns the Place Page into something much more than a repository of checkins.