John McAfee Launches Chadder - A Privacy App For Young People

John McAfee is better known these days for being on the run from police in Belize rather than as a antivirus pioneer, but he is looking to get back into the security business with the launch of Chadder, a privacy-focused instant messaging app.

A joint-venture between John McAfee's company Future Tense and a startup called Etransfr, Chadder is targeting a younger demographic by promising to keep your messages safe from prying eyes by encrypting the content on your device and only decrypting it when it arrives on the phone of the intended recipient.

Chadder says that even it cannot read any messages which pass through its servers, as it does not hold the cryptographic key which is sent to the recipient in order to decrypt the message.

Younger people

Etransfr founder Lexi Sprague said: "The social media industry is built around the consumer also being the product. Chadder is here to prove that young people want privacy just as much as adults do. The application is simple and straight forward with a lot of power given to the user."

The app is available for Windows Phone and Android only at the moment with the company saying that an iOS version is in the works.

The app is also a beta version, meaning that not all the features are working properly at the moment with a number of reviews on the Google Play app store complaining of several issues with the software - though it does have an overall review rating of 4.1 out of 5.

John McAfee first rose to prominence in the 1980s as a security software pioneer with his eponymous company McAfee Associates one of the pioneers in the early days of computer security.

McAfee turned his back on the company he created however, selling his entire stake in the business which was subsequently sold to Intel, which has now retired the brand.

McAfee himself has become known for his more outlandish behaviour in recent years, with the most recent incident seeing McAfee going on the run from police in Belize where he was wanted for questioning in relation to the murder of his neighbour Gregory Faull in November 2012.

McAfee's whereabouts are not known at the moment, but he was last seen in Portland, Oregon where he was evicted from his apartment for apparently stalking a property manager.