The privacy-centric Blackphone is getting its own privacy app store

Unveiled at this year’s Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Blackphone is a project aiming to offer consumers a secure Android phone coupled with a privacy-oriented mobile operating system called PrivatOS. On Tuesday, the company announced a new version of PrivatOS, as well as the launch of the Blackphone app store, which it says is the first privacy-focused app store. The most important new feature in PrivatOS is called Spaces, giving users the ability to create completely separate sandboxes in which they can have different apps and accounts.

Can you keep a secret? The ultra-secure Blackphone is getting its own app store that only sells apps that won’t sell you out. The Blackphone is a collaboration between hardware manufacturer Geeksphone and Silent Circle, which helps you keep your communication safe from prying eyes. The phone boasts tight encryption to keep your data safe, and comes with subscriptions to services that protect your calls, texts and emails. The Blackphone app store will launch in January and will examine apps before allowing them in the store — described as “the Apple model” by Blackphone chief executive Toby Weir-Jones. “We’ll have a few degrees of vetting,” Weir-Jones told the Guardian. “If you have an app to manage your social media accounts and it wanted access to your microphone and your camera we might ask why and get on a first screening.”