Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

whatsapp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 319 posts

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#51

Post by omginternets »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #34

Man, remember the late 90s and early 2000s, when the IM scene was a mess of incompatible networks like ICQ and AIM and MSN Messenger, and people were like "fuck this" and came up with this protocol that was interoperable with all the others through gateways and also it was extendable, and we could all be happy together?... /grump The worst part is that WhatsApp is actually based on Jabber >:(

I recently started looking into XMPP again a few days ago. I have a few ideas for projects built on top thereof.

Can anybody recommend XMPP servers? I know duckduckgo has an XMPP service up and running, but I can't seem to find any relevant API documentation. All I found was this [0], which doesn't go into details about encryption settings and isn't very useful for programmatic interaction.

[0] https://duck.co/blog/post/2/using-pidgin-with-xmpp-jabber

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#54

Post by ethbro »

hueving wrote: post #40
dsacco wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have skin in this game, but I want to mention that contests are not evidence of security. Furthermore, cryptographers other than those working at Signal have expressed distrust for its security.[1][2] What Telegram should do to earn the trust of the technical community (specifically, the security savvy people who criticize it for unorthodox encryption methodologies), is contract a real audit from a leading se…

>is contract a real audit from a leading security firm Suggestions like this do nothing to dispell the image that modern security firms are little more than a protection racket. If you don't pay for "an audit" from an "industry leading" firm, you'll be shunned by everyone.

What's your alternative suggestion?

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#55

Post by sp332 »

skrowl wrote: post #8

Or... you know... just use something like Telegram that isn't owned by Facebook. Their data-sharing / privacy policy is pretty simple https://telegram.org/privacy 1. Sharing data We never share your data with anyone. No.

It's not owned by Facebook yet.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#56

Post by hointytointy »

omginternets wrote: post #51
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #34

Man, remember the late 90s and early 2000s, when the IM scene was a mess of incompatible networks like ICQ and AIM and MSN Messenger, and people were like "fuck this" and came up with this protocol that was interoperable with all the others through gateways and also it was extendable, and we could all be happy together?... /grump The worst part is that WhatsApp is actually based on Jabber >:(

I recently started looking into XMPP again a few days ago. I have a few ideas for projects built on top thereof. Can anybody recommend XMPP servers? I know duckduckgo has an XMPP service up and running, but I can't seem to find any relevant API documentation. All I found was this [0], which doesn't go into details about encryption settings and isn't very useful for programmatic interaction. [0] https://duck.co/blog/p…

Conversations.im has made great progress in making XMPP usable on mobile devices, although its services don't seem ready for public adoption quite yet. There are very few XMPP servers which support the XEPs Conversations does so while federation is theoretically possible, it is not yet a reality.

https://account.conversations.im/

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#57

Post by cortesoft »

AceJohnny2 wrote: post #42
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #34

Man, remember the late 90s and early 2000s, when the IM scene was a mess of incompatible networks like ICQ and AIM and MSN Messenger, and people were like "fuck this" and came up with this protocol that was interoperable with all the others through gateways and also it was extendable, and we could all be happy together?... /grump The worst part is that WhatsApp is actually based on Jabber >:(

And yes, I absolutely realize that the protocol had flaws, was overly verbose, the base spec required a continuous connection which is hard/impossible on mobile networks, its extensibility meant that clients could end up with little common compatibility, etc etc... But still.

Jabber is still around and works, there is nothing that stops you from using it.

However, clearly people prefer to use other systems, such as Whatsapp. They offered something different (and simple) enough that it enticed people to use it, and so they have the users. It would appear that people just don't care enough about interoperability to switch to something else.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#58

Post by CodeMichael »

I'm trying to find more info about https://wire.com

They would seem to be doing all the right things, such as OTR and not rolling their own protocols, but I've only been able to find a couple of opinions and nothing concrete.

The fact that they've made effort to open source it and are letting people write their own clients for it is encouraging, but not proof that it's a solid system.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#59

Post by landryraccoon »

skrowl wrote: post #8

Or... you know... just use something like Telegram that isn't owned by Facebook. Their data-sharing / privacy policy is pretty simple https://telegram.org/privacy 1. Sharing data We never share your data with anyone. No.

If you're in the contact list of anyone who uses WhatsApp they already have your info.

Re: “How do I choose not to share my account information with Facebook?”

#60

Post by skrowl »

kennell wrote: post #41
skrowl wrote: post #8

Or... you know... just use something like Telegram that isn't owned by Facebook. Their data-sharing / privacy policy is pretty simple https://telegram.org/privacy 1. Sharing data We never share your data with anyone. No.

Who keeps the lights on? The app is free, i have never seen any ads.

Private funding. It's in their FAQ.
Post reply on HN