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TOX – A New Kind of Instant Messaging

tox.chat

21–30 of 110 posts

Re: TOX – A New Kind of Instant Messaging

#22
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was mad disappointed by signal. Not only does it require google play services, it also asks for about two dozen privileges on your phone. Not a great look for a privacy oriented app.

Moxie doesn’t consider that kind of privacy important. Governments listening to you is irrelevant, and third party clients are something he actively tries to prohibit. His position is that it’s better if everyone gets a little safety, than if a few people get full safety.

> and third party clients are something he actively tries to prohibit.

It's a solution that probably makes sense if you try to solve the problem from within the gilded cages of Google/Facebook/Apple, but it is a kind of exclusionary thinking that to me goes against the spirit of open standards and user freedom on the internet.

Re: TOX – A New Kind of Instant Messaging

#23
post #11

I tried an earlier version of a tox client. At that time, there were at least two competing clients that looked the same and did the same things. Is the tox civil war over yet?

But you realize that's like saying "Well, I tried IRC but there are dozens of competing clients that all do the same thing." The Tox protocol is really the core tool. As long as the protocol is well-defined and maintained, I think developers should be free to make whichever clients that they want. I used tox ages ago, and I used the Blight client or whatever it was called, and I liked it pretty well. I think a bigger…

In this case, it's not like saying anything about IRC chat clients or Hipchat or whatever your team uses or develops. The clients really did look and behave the same. There was so much overlap between them. Not exaggerating this point.

Re: TOX – A New Kind of Instant Messaging

#24

from the FAQ: "How do I add someone to my contacts list? Look in the profile or settings panel of your client to get your Tox ID which should look something like: 56A1ADE4B65B86BCD51CC73E2CD4E542179F47959FE3E0E21B4B0ACDADE51855D34D34D37CB5" Yuk! I see this flaw so many products like this, just about anything p2p, blockchain addresses, commit ids, etc. I think there is zero chance of getting anyone who is not technolo…

ToxMe[1] seems to attempt to solve this issue by creating a public databases of emails and Tox IDs, though this defeats the object of the service being anonymous. [1] https://toxme.io/

It's good that it is a choice you have though.

Re: TOX – A New Kind of Instant Messaging

#25

Be warned, Tox claims to protect users from "governments", which is a huge claim. Yet, it's written in C, it hasn't had a security audit, it does not publish a list of security risks and mitigations, and, regarding its roots in 4chan, see for yourself: https://github.com/irungentoo/toxcore/issues/1186

List of security risks and Tox-ic (BDUM-KSSH) community are worrying, as is the lack of security audits.

As for the fact that it's written in C, GPG, Tor, Psyc, and many other pieces of security software that you trust are written in C. It's dangerous, but writing secure apps isn't impossible.

Re: TOX – A New Kind of Instant Messaging

#26
post #20

from the FAQ: "How do I add someone to my contacts list? Look in the profile or settings panel of your client to get your Tox ID which should look something like: 56A1ADE4B65B86BCD51CC73E2CD4E542179F47959FE3E0E21B4B0ACDADE51855D34D34D37CB5" Yuk! I see this flaw so many products like this, just about anything p2p, blockchain addresses, commit ids, etc. I think there is zero chance of getting anyone who is not technolo…

Choose two: Human-meaningful: Meaningful and memorable (low-entropy) names are provided to the users. Secure: Any entity in the system can act maliciously, including the majority of the entities or the available computational power. Decentralized: There is still only one, unique and specific entity to which a name resolves. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zooko%27s_triangle

[deleted]

Re: TOX – A New Kind of Instant Messaging

#27

from the FAQ: "How do I add someone to my contacts list? Look in the profile or settings panel of your client to get your Tox ID which should look something like: 56A1ADE4B65B86BCD51CC73E2CD4E542179F47959FE3E0E21B4B0ACDADE51855D34D34D37CB5" Yuk! I see this flaw so many products like this, just about anything p2p, blockchain addresses, commit ids, etc. I think there is zero chance of getting anyone who is not technolo…

You underestimate how alien "http://www.yahoo.com./" looked in 1995.

Re: TOX – A New Kind of Instant Messaging

#28
Right now I'm not really bothered about end-to-end encryption. If a government wants to track me, they will find a way. I'm more concerned about Facebook/Google/Microsoft/Apple tracking me, reading my private conversations, and selling my data to the highest bidder. I'd like an open source, decentralised messaging platform, that has good mobile apps.

Are suggestions?

Re: TOX – A New Kind of Instant Messaging

#29
post #27

from the FAQ: "How do I add someone to my contacts list? Look in the profile or settings panel of your client to get your Tox ID which should look something like: 56A1ADE4B65B86BCD51CC73E2CD4E542179F47959FE3E0E21B4B0ACDADE51855D34D34D37CB5" Yuk! I see this flaw so many products like this, just about anything p2p, blockchain addresses, commit ids, etc. I think there is zero chance of getting anyone who is not technolo…

You underestimate how alien " http://www.yahoo.com./" looked in 1995.

The difference is that there _is_ meaning to be found in that URL once you learn which standard boilerplate is ignorable. And once you know how to parse them, most web addresses are easy enough to remember. Random alphanumeric strings contain no human-parseable meaning and have no patterns to aid in memorization.

Re: TOX – A New Kind of Instant Messaging

#30
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was mad disappointed by signal. Not only does it require google play services, it also asks for about two dozen privileges on your phone. Not a great look for a privacy oriented app.

Moxie doesn’t consider that kind of privacy important. Governments listening to you is irrelevant, and third party clients are something he actively tries to prohibit. His position is that it’s better if everyone gets a little safety, than if a few people get full safety.

"that kind of privacy". So which 'kind' of privacy does it try to improve on? I've been thinking of switching to a different application for messaging and Signal came by a few times but I don't know a lot about it. Would you care to elaborate?
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