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Tech giants team up to build friendlier security tools

If there's one overarching, fundamental truth about the internet, it's that you're never as safe as you think you are. Dropbox, Google and the Open Technology Fund get that all too well -- that's why they (along with a slew of security researchers) teamed up to launch a new organization called Simply Secure. The name says it all, really -- everyone involved knows there are plenty of effective digital security tools floating around, but not very many of them are designed with friendliness and ease of use in mind. That's where Simply Secure comes in.

The group (headed by former Google project manager Sara Sinclair Brody) wants to develop its own open-source tools that wrap powerful online security measures in a tasteful, thoughtfully designed veneer that means the less-than-tech-savvy get to be as safe as we nerds without poring through tomes or scrutinizing FAQs. It's still early days for the project, so it could be a long while before we catch a glimpse of what the team actually cooks up. Still, Google managed to paint a (pretty vague) picture of what Simply Secure might tackle on its Online Security blog, noting that the group will work the developers of projects like Open Whisper Systems and Guardian to make them easier to average folks to grok.