Whistleblower Software Platforms And Applications

Whistleblower software platforms and applications are designed for whistleblowers, who are self-appointed persons with the task of telling the people or specific groups of interest concerning alleged unlawful or dishonest deeds inside the government, private companies and like entities.

The applications are available as both open source and closed source, where open source means contributors are able to edit the program's source code to suit their needs while closed source only provides the end-user interactive side.

They are designed in different ways to support a wide variety of users including individuals, corporate organizations, media groups and the public at large. They can also be customized for very specific uses like in a company where employees are needed to report suspected activities discretely or they can general for anyone to disclose what they want to everyone else, for example the ones used online.

Such platforms are usually created to increase transparency and accountability in the way things are done is the society by bringing out information that would otherwise be hidden from the general public. Such information can be political, economic, social or technological concerning issues such as education, healthcare, defense, military, environment, insurance, financial markets, public works, royalties and other sensitive areas where fraud and secrecy is likely.

Retaining the anonymity of the contributors of information is a high priority for the designers of these kind of software, thus they create them with maximum privacy and security settings on default. The technologies they use are designed to protect all communications and hide the identity of the source computer and the servers relaying the information, therefore protecting both from retaliation attacks.

Though by default the sources are never disclosed, some do intentionally want to reveal themselves, thus they are also designed in a way that the person or group running the software are able to customize the programs to suit their particular needs for either case. Most people shy away from using these platforms due to the sensitivity of the nature of their use. To counter this challenge, the designers are requested to implement reward systems in some of them to encourage users to share, while assuring them of maximum security and encryption of their identities.

While some developers of these applications do so strictly for business and money, there are others who do them because they believe what they create promotes transparency and accountability in governments and companies alike. They believe and hope that what they create will enable informed decision making and root out corruption and fraud among other vices.