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# Silence [](https://travis-ci.org/SilenceIM/Silence)
[Silence](https://silence.im) is an SMS/MMS application that allows you to protect your privacy while communicating with friends.
Using Silence, you can send SMS messages and share media or attachments with complete privacy.
* Easy. Silence works like any other SMS application. There's nothing to sign up for and no new service your friends need to join.
* Reliable. Silence communicates using encrypted SMS messages. No servers or internet connection required.
* Private. Silence uses the Axolotl encryption protocol to provide privacy for every message, every time.
* Safe. All messages are encrypted locally, so if your phone is lost or stolen, your messages are protected.
* Open Source. Silence is Free and Open Source, enabling anyone to verify its security by auditing the code.
This is a fork of [TextSecure](https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure) (now Signal) that aims to keep the SMS encryption that TextSecure removed [for a variety of reasons](https://whispersystems.org/blog/goodbye-encrypted-sms/).
Silence focuses on SMS and MMS. This fork aims to:
* Drop Google services dependencies (push messages are not available in Silence)
* Integrate upstream bugfixes and patches from TextSecure
* In TextSecure, export a plaintext backup. Warning: the backup will **not** be encrypted.
* Install Silence.
* In Silence, import the plaintext backup (this will import the TextSecure backup if no Silence backup is found).
* If TextSecure v2.6.4 or earlier is installed, update or uninstall it so it doesn't conflict (can cause errors with key exchanges).
Note: You will have to start new secured sessions with your contacts.
See [CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/SilenceIM/Silence/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md) for how to contribute code, translations, or bug reports.
Instructions on how to setup a development environment and build Silence can be found in [BUILDING.md](https://github.com/SilenceIM/Silence/blob/master/BUILDING.md).
Looking for documentation? Check out the wiki of the original project:
Have a question? Want to help out? Join our IRC channel: [#Silence on Freenode](https://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=Silence) or follow [@SilenceIM](https://twitter.com/SilenceIM) on Twitter.
This distribution includes cryptographic software. The country in which you currently reside may have restrictions on the import, possession, use, and/or re-export to another country, of encryption software.
BEFORE using any encryption software, please check your country's laws, regulations and policies concerning the import, possession, or use, and re-export of encryption software, to see if this is permitted.
See <http://www.wassenaar.org/> for more information.
Licensed under the GPLv3: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html