[HN Gopher] Show HN: Neucards - Privacy based digital contact card
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Show HN: Neucards - Privacy based digital contact card
Neucards is an end-to-end encrypted contact information sharing and
updating iOS app that protects your identity while letting you keep
in touch with people. I started working on neucards as a side
project more than ten years ago, and I decided three years ago to
go full-time and try to build a community around it. There are two
major problems that neucards addresses. First, most people end up
with contact lists that are hopelessly out of date. Over time,
people move, change jobs, or add social profiles and unless they
tell you, chances are you could lose touch. Second, your contact
information ends up in the wrong hands. There has been a huge
increase in robocalls, unsolicited emails, data breaches, and
online scams that is driven by accessing a person's contact info.
Even worse, with AI now being able to imitate a person's voice or
other mannerisms, knowledge about the connections you have with
others can be used against you. Neucards automatically updates
your contact information for anyone who has your digital contact
card. You control your contact information and who has access. This
is possible because of end-to-end encryption. Neucards brings the
same level of protection for your contact information as Signal or
WhatsApp does for your chats. Privacy is built it. But, even with
these protections, you can share your contact info with anyone. As
an example, here is a link to my Social card:
https://www.neucards.com/of/braddominy?id=M6TC5PLngD&k=4R98i...
I'm excited about how much neucards has grown and what I have
planned for the future to do even more to protect people's privacy.
If you have any comments, please let me know. Brad
https://www.neucards.com
Author : bdominy
Score : 30 points
Date : 2023-05-16 17:00 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.neucards.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.neucards.com)
| smoldesu wrote:
| This looks cool. Unfortunately, I can get 99% of the way there
| with a regular NFC tag that has my contact info and a link to my
| website. Doing that, I can link to my own website and keep
| everything up-to-date and I don't need to trust others for
| security.
|
| With all that in mind, I think your actual product is kinda thin
| and easy to disrupt. I wish you luck (I'm surprised more people
| _don 't_ use NFC business cards) but I'm not sure about your
| staying power with the current iteration.
| bdominy wrote:
| You may be right. It isn't easy to convince people to try
| something new. As for your website contact info link, how do
| you tell people that have the link to revisit it when you've
| made a change?
| _1tan wrote:
| Cool! Is the app restricted to certain regions at the moment?
| Unable to download from a EU-country.
| bdominy wrote:
| Unfortunately, it is restricted to the US App Store due to
| there being a higher compliance necessary for using encryption
| in Europe and other countries outside the US. Once I get some
| traction, I'm planning to release it everywhere.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > higher compliance necessary for using encryption in Europe
|
| Excuse me? What are you referring to? I'm in Europe (UK), I
| use encryption routinely, and if I have a compliance
| obligation I didn't know about, I'd be grateful if you'd
| point it out to me.
| bdominy wrote:
| Sorry. I mean Apple adds steps to releasing an app outside
| the US if it uses encryption. I'm doing neucards as a solo
| effort and am hoping to see some traction before taking on
| those requirements. Here is a link to Apple's policy
|
| https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/complyin
| g...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| And here I thought that the days of encryption being
| classified under ITAR were over for _decades_. Apparently
| I was wrong, or Apple insists on over-compliance...
| RileyJames wrote:
| Same deal, would love access in AU/NZ
| prophesi wrote:
| Any chance of opening the source? I'm a bit confused how it could
| be E2E-encrypted if the URL doesn't have a URI fragment. This is
| usually where the key would be located, as the URI fragment isn't
| sent to the server unless there's malicious code doing otherwise.
| bdominy wrote:
| For card links, I'm using a one time key to protect the
| information stored on my server. The end-to-end encryption
| works when you exchange cards using the Neucards app with
| another Neucards user. It's a tricky situation because people
| won't use it if it isn't able to quickly exchange contact info
| like a vcard or other digital cards. The goal was to make sure
| nothing could be read by a third party without the user giving
| them access. As for opening the source, I'm going to wait and
| see. I understand the need for verification, but it is also
| difficult to make a living doing that.
| pfg_ wrote:
| It looks like the web interface is not E2E encrypted, the
| server decrypts the card info and sends that decrypted info to
| you.
| alaskamiller wrote:
| Another old timer Yahoo engineer showed me something like this at
| a cupertino coffee shop a few years back but with like half the
| features ready but the enthusiasm is there so I guess vcf sharing
| is a pretty deep idea. The headline, sub, and intro copy can do
| with simple jargons. The nfc cards/stickers are a good
| incremental add on. Good luck!
| bdominy wrote:
| Thank you! Contacts sharing and updating has had a lot of takes
| over the years. I remember Plaxo and Bump, back in the day. I'm
| hoping adding a privacy focus will help people feel more
| comfortable sharing better information and improving their
| connections.
| alaskamiller wrote:
| A la Google wave circle sharing. I think the lesson from that
| war was that humans inherently are bad at pre-judging their
| own relationships. But now we're in the LLM era so I would
| hope it would be automated for me.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Nice idea but without worldwide availability and and Android
| version there's no chance for it.
|
| Here in Spain Android is about 70% of the mobile market.
|
| But nice idea in general. It would also be nice to be able to
| unshare or blacklist contacts (like pushy sales guys that keep
| bothering me for stuff I have nothing to do with)
| bdominy wrote:
| 100% agree. I'm hoping to add Android and other markets in the
| not too distant future. As for unsharing, that's possible by
| removing a recipient and I have plans to help even more in the
| scenario you describe.
| bdominy wrote:
| Also, I was recently on the Shifting Privacy Left podcast hosted
| by Debra Farber discussing Neucards and privacy in general. You
| can listen at
| https://shiftingprivacyleft.buzzsprout.com/2059470/12853299-...
| [deleted]
| RileyJames wrote:
| I like the idea behind this.
|
| My concerns with using it are that the app itself languishes, or
| doesn't get traction.
|
| Is there any capacity to use a neucard with a recipient that
| doesn't have the app?
|
| Are there any plans to open this up to alternative clients /
| implementations?
|
| Are there parts you can open source while maintaining a business
| around some portions of the product? (Such as the physical cards)
| bdominy wrote:
| Thank you! I'm glad you like the idea.
|
| For sharing with others who don't have the app, the link you
| send lets them see your card's contact information on the
| neucards' website which they can act on. So, for example, I
| typically share my phone number, linked in profile, twitter
| handle, etc. and that works faster for me than just giving
| someone my number and texting them the rest. Also, by using
| card types, you can set up multiple cards (Professional,
| Personal, Friends, Minimal, etc.) and then have more control
| over what info you share initially.
|
| I'm very much hoping to add Android and making neucards as
| universal as possible. Open sourcing would definitely help with
| that, but I'm taking a wait and see approach. The physical nfc
| tags were just added and if people embrace them, then it would
| make that approach more viable.
| bdominy wrote:
| BTW, I wrote about my experience creating the NFC tags at
| IndieHackers - https://www.indiehackers.com/post/shipped-my-
| first-order-tod...
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > prestine
|
| If you could do with a proofreader for site copy, I know some
| people who might be happy to help.
| bdominy wrote:
| Thanks! Good catch! I could use all the help I can get :)
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(page generated 2023-05-16 23:01 UTC)