What happened to the Whisper app, and where to talk anonymously now
This page is about Whisper, the app for anonymous confessions: a short line of text laid over a picture, posted to a public feed, with private messages to whoever answered. It isn't about OpenAI's speech-recognition model of the same name. The confessions app is gone. It has left both app stores, and its old address now shows somebody else's website. Veilr isn't a confession feed. It's a one-to-one text chat with strangers from around the world, and the chat box at the top of this page belongs to it.
What Whisper was
Whisper launched on 31 March 2012, made by WhisperText LLC in Venice, California, co-founded by Michael Heyward and Brad Brooks. You didn't give it an email, a phone number or a social account. You opened it and posted. It existed only on iOS and Android, never as a website you could chat on.
The idea caught on at a scale few apps reach. In March 2017 the company said 250 million people used it each month across 187 countries. Its posts appeared in a widget on the sites of the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, and it raised $61 million from investors. The text-over-an-image format became a genre of its own that other apps copied.
It did something random video chat never tries to do. It let you say the thing you couldn't say anywhere else, without a face, a voice or a name attached. And at the door it asked for less than almost any "anonymous" service does today.
How it ended
2014. The Guardian reported that Whisper tracked users' locations, including people who had opted out, to within about 500 metres, and shared data with the US Department of Defense. Whisper denied it; its editor-in-chief said the app "does not collect nor store any personal identifiable information from users". In March 2015 the Guardian published clarifications that walked back part of the story.
2019. Whisper passed to the holding company MediaLab.
March 2020. The Washington Post reported that Whisper's database of messages had been left open online without a password: about 900 million records going back to 2012. There were no names in it, but there were stated ages, ethnicities, genders, hometowns, nicknames, group memberships and the location of each user's latest post. 1.3 million records belonged to people who had given their age as 15.
May 2020. A class action, Naja Ogburn et al. v. WhisperText Inc., case no. 2:20-cv-4124, was filed in the Central District of California by three women who said they started using the app as children. We couldn't find how it ended.
2022 to 2025. According to Wikipedia, whose paragraphs on this are marked as needing citations, the app was pulled from the App Store, returned and pulled again more than once, and was removed from Google Play in September 2024, came back in January 2025 and was removed again that same month.
April 2025. Forbes reported that Whisper had quietly gone offline without any announcement. It cited a federal search warrant from mid-2024 describing three undercover agents, posing as minors, who were each contacted on Whisper by the same suspect. MediaLab didn't answer Forbes.
Checked on 27 August 2026. No Whisper app in Google Play or the App Store. whisper.sh loads a page for "an underground music label for growing talent". The domain is still registered to MediaLab and paid up until January 2028, and MediaLab has never publicly announced a closure.
What Veilr is, and what it isn't
Veilr has no feed. There are no posts, no likes, and no audience for something you write. If you want to put a secret out where thousands of strangers can read it, Veilr isn't that, and we won't pretend otherwise.
What it does share with Whisper is the second half: a private conversation with someone who doesn't know who you are. You choose Text, press Start text chat, and Veilr looks for one stranger to pair you with. Nothing asks for your camera.
The honest difference is at the door. Whisper asked for nothing at all. Veilr wants a sign-in through an account you already own, Google being one option, and has no guest mode. A first-time profile follows with four fields: your name, your gender, your date of birth and your native language. If the date of birth on record makes you under 18, you won't be matched with anyone. So Veilr knows which account you are. The stranger on the other side doesn't.
What the stranger sees
By default: your gender, an age range rather than your age, and a country flag when the country is known. In text they also get your profile photo, blurred, plus a verified or Boost badge if you have one and your native language unless you hide it. The blur has one exception worth knowing. A partner with an active Boost can clear it for that chat, and you won't be notified. Your exact age goes only to someone who searched with an age filter. Your real name, your email address and your city are never shown to a stranger.
What happens to what you write
After Whisper's leak, this is the part that matters. Messages from a random chat don't go into our permanent database. Veilr holds the last 50 messages of a session in a short-lived buffer, so that a report has something to look at, and that buffer deletes itself within 15 minutes of the chat ending.
Keeping a conversation is the one exception, and it needs both of you. The Add to contacts button is there during the chat and for a short window after a text chat ends; pressing it only asks. Once you've both pressed it, the conversation moves over to your private chats, and you each receive the other's display name and account email. That exchange is exactly why one tap isn't enough.
Other things that work differently here
Language. Veilr doesn't sort anyone by language, so your partner may write in one you can't read. Each message can be translated for the reader, with the original a tap away. Free accounts start with a batch of translations, rewards top it up, and Boost takes the limit off. Menus and buttons come in 16 languages.
Reports. Reporting someone moves you on to a new partner, and the two of you won't be paired again for a day. Blocking them permanently is up to you, separately.
Cost. Text chat is free, and so are voice and video. What's for sale is optional and bought once: Boost, which moves you to the front of the queue and makes your choices strict, and extra caption minutes for calls. Prices appear in the app.
Where it runs. In a browser on any phone or computer, iPhone included, and as an Android app on Google Play. Unlike Whisper, it has never been in the App Store.
Whisper and Veilr, side by side
| Whisper (2012–2025) | Veilr | |
|---|---|---|
| What it was for | Posting confessions to a public feed, then messaging | One-to-one chats in text, voice or video |
| Getting in | Nothing asked: no email, no phone | A sign-in and a four-field profile |
| Where your words ended up | A database found open in 2020 | Random chat text isn't kept in our permanent database |
| On a phone | Gone from both stores | The browser on any phone; an Android app on Google Play |
| Who runs it | MediaLab; no statement on the closure | A few friends from Kazakhstan, with no company behind them |
The first two rows belong to Whisper. Nothing on Veilr replaces a feed, and nothing that asks you to sign in beats an app that didn't.
Starting a text chat on Veilr
- 1. Sign in with Google or another account you already have, then fill in the four profile fields.
- 2. In the chat window above, pick Text and press Start text chat.
Veilr can't be used from the United Kingdom.
Other comparisons
- All the chat services we've compared
- Chatib — text chat rooms sorted by subject and country.
- Chatiw — free text chat where you pick a partner from a list of who's online.
- Text chat — Veilr's one-to-one typing, step by step.
- Voice chat — for when typing isn't enough.
Questions about the Whisper app
Is the Whisper app still available?
No. On 27 August 2026 there was no Whisper app in Google Play or the App Store, and whisper.sh showed an unrelated music label page.
Did Whisper shut down?
In practice, yes. Forbes reported in April 2025 that it had quietly gone offline. MediaLab, which owns it, never announced a closure, and Wikipedia's date of July 2025 has no source behind it.
Was Whisper really anonymous?
It didn't ask for your name, email or phone number. But the database exposed in 2020 held ages, genders, hometowns, nicknames and post locations, which says a lot about what anonymous meant in practice.
Is there an app like Whisper?
Veilr isn't one, if you mean a feed of anonymous posts. If what you miss is the private conversation with a stranger, Veilr's text chat does that, on the web and on Android.
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