Haridwar lad designs ‘hacker-safe’ chat app

Sandeep Rawat

Tribune News Service

Haridwar, November 3

A class XI student of Shiv Dale School, Jagjeetpur, has made a social messaging chat application having varied new and effective features.

Alok Pratap (15) thought of making an application after he came to know about the problem of hacking and other restraints found in popular apps, such as Whatsapp and Hike.

Named ‘Community Now’, the app has distinctive features such as hacking protection, fast chat, facility of 200 users in a single group, 1.5 GB image and video uploading facility as well as voice messaging.

For those who do not want other users to know about them being involved in chatting sessions, a unique feature of ‘secret chatting’ is also available in the ‘Community Now’ app.

Talking to The Tribune, Alok Pratap said it took him three months to make the app, which has been certified by Google and Amazon web giants. “Community Now app is user friendly, easier and faster to operate and has distinctive qualities which are way ahead of normal chatting networking apps. Using Whataspp and Hike, I knew of their shortcomings. So I decided to make a much advanced and 100 per cent secure app,” said Alok.

His father, Kunwar Durgesh Pratap Singh, said they were oblivious of the research and efforts being put in by his son for the past few months as he kept it a secret and only revealed when he had fully made the application.

“Alok has been actively involved in the software and apps related technology for the past two years. But we did not have any clue that he was working on an app. We are proud of his achievement and he has shown that if one has dedicated efforts, success surely comes your way,” Durgesh said.

Alok’s school principal Kiran Sharma has termed him a young prodigy who has brought laurels to the school and the state.

Social activist SK Batra, who motivated Alok to achieve something different in life, said ‘Community Now’ app had the potential to become a leading social networking chatting application as it had numerous pro-chat user friendly options and was 100 per cent hacker free, making it viable for official use too.

The application was launched on October 22 and can be downloaded from Google Play Store. It already has 200 plus users, texting and sharing files, videos and information on this social networking site.