this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2024
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Privacy

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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.

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[–] sibachian@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

DeltaChat. I don't use it myself because it's built on electron (which basically excludes 99% of modern chat clients); but as it's technically an email client turned into a chat client, we can assume you're protected by PGP when writing to most users, and with the added effect of not needing to convince anyone to install anything since from their end it's just an email.

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

protected by PGP

Someone here recently linked to this gem https://www.latacora.com/blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem/

The article warns PGP over Email is a safety concern. They suggest Signal instead. (And several other tools to replace PGP)

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[–] khalil@beehaw.org 2 points 2 months ago

E-mail is horrible for privacy, spam, instant messaging, etc. PGP "works" in very limited scenarios, and e-mail is not really one of them.

Plus these two statements seem unplausible for me:

we can assume you're protected by PGP when writing to most users,

and

and with the added effect of not needing to convince anyone to install anything since from their end it's just an email.

I disagree with the first statement, most users don't know what PGP is and therefore don't have keys, so you can't encrypt anything to them. The only way most users would use PGP is if something sets it up for them, alá protonmail or my using some special client. Since you've said that from their end it is just an e-mail, how does Deltachat add any meaningful encryption?

[–] pancake@lemmygrad.ml 2 points 2 months ago

I guess we could make one using newer FHE-RAM techniques and some edge case handling.

[–] ikilledtheradiostar@hexbear.net 2 points 2 months ago

reasons not to use signal

Has this been updated in awhile?

[–] dsilverz@thelemmy.club 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Just out of curiosity: why is nobody recommending Tox?

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 months ago

It lacks a security audit

[–] mctoasterson@reddthat.com 2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

If you really need it to be secure and private, and are communicating mostly with known acquaintances within a reasonable radius, with low bandwidth requirements, LoRA with encryption is the best bet.

It is a higher bar of entry but at least you can be confident your messages won't be intercepted in any useful form.

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

I have been interested in trying out LoRA and just need to get some devices built. Though I am not as concerned about the super privacy part (thought that is nice). I am thinking that it would be good for emergency situations like shit that has happened with the south-east. Even if the communications would be limited to text, shit is good as long as I can use simple solar panels and battery banks.

[–] orb360@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Meshtastic can do this, and leverage other nodes as relays.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Have you used it before? I'm curious about how it works. I don't personally have a use case but it seems very cool.

[–] orb360@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 months ago

I have 2 heltec v3 nodes, I setup an encrypted channel between them... I can get good distance but I have a very good network run by others in the area that I piggy back on.

If you have line of sight you can go pretty far

I don't really have much of a use case though, it's just playing around with the tech for fun.

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

This comment is a great start for what you're looking for.

https://feddit.org/comment/2362732

[–] Undertaker@feddit.org 1 points 2 months ago

Signal, Threema, SimpleX.

Your source is ridiculous. Please educate yourself about more how Signal works.

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