this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
93 points (86.0% liked)

Privacy

32442 readers
822 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I've been inspecting this topic quite a lot and I'm a little confused now. So, we have reasons not to use Signal, reasons not to use Matrix, there were also some claims about Session being a fraught. Briar is mostly activists related (not very suitable for daily use), XMPP lacks good clients and suffers from fragmentation of protocol standards implementation, SimpleX is too feature-incomplete (no UnifiedPush support, big battery drain on Android, very decent desktop client without any message sync). I can't say a lot about Threema or Wire, as I'm not very familiar with them.

So, my question is — is there any good private messenger at all? What do you think is the most acceptable option?

EDIT: In addition to my post:

All messengers have their flaws, I'm well aware of that. I was interested in hearing users' opinions regarding these shortcomings, not in finding the perfect messenger. I may have worded my thoughts incorrectly, sorry for that.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] mipadaitu@lemmy.world 101 points 2 months ago (3 children)

That article in Signal is bogus. It is entirely based on speculation from how funding comes in, and also either ignores, or misunderstands how Signal fundamentally works.

The EFF recommends Signal, and it's one of the most secure ways to communicate.

https://ssd.eff.org/module/how-to-use-signal

You can make your own decisions, but if you just grab any random arguments, you'll find a reason to doubt everything.

[–] FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org 32 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Lemmy has some sort of slander campaign going against Signal. Can't tell if it's just misinformed idiots or a paid shill smear campaign being run here (likely the former, Lemmy is too small for companies to give a shit about.) It's really annoying. Same with Mozilla and Firefox. Not sure Lemmy likes anything?

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Give me your phone number so I can chat with you on signal about this.

[–] Cenotaph@mander.xyz 28 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Signal has usernames (must be enabled) and you can have your phone number hidden from public view & prevent it from being used to search up your acc

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 26 points 2 months ago (2 children)

That got added recently, but you still need a phone number to sign up. A phone number is tied to your identity, meaning that signal's database has the names and addresses of everyone who uses it. And since signal is US-based, its subject to US national security letters, meaning its illegal for signal to tell anyone that the US government has requested information about who they're talking to.

Under the Obama administration, an average of 60 NSLs were issued every single day.

[–] Sparkega@sh.itjust.works 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's not too difficult to establish a Signal account from a burner number from a prepaid sim card. I currently have a Signal account tied to a sim not in my name. Getting a burner with cash is an option. Or, if you're lucky enough to live near a payphone and can gain access to the number, you can activate a signal with a phone call.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

There is no reason to do any of that. No one forced signal to use phone numbers as their primary identifier, and plenty of privacy oriented chat programs don't require that.

[–] toastal@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago

Let me message you without having an Android or iOS primary device then. Can’t do it.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The US-state-department funding is important sure, but you also ignored every other point in that article.

[–] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Do you make the same criticism of TOR?

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 months ago

That rabbit hole goes very deep, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to speak on it. It could very well be a crypto AG style honey-pot, or already cracked tech, that we might not know about for years to come.

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

You can make your own decisions, but if you just grab any random arguments, you'll find a reason to doubt everything.

Agreed. Especially if your source is Dessalines. 🙄