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Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

nytimes.com

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Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#51

Post by maxerickson »

zi0nman wrote: post #47

I am really interested why Signal. Why not Telegram? I prefer Telegram over Signal because of much more better UI and rich functionalities i.e. bots. Signal app seems clunky and buggy. That's my 2 cents.

Signal never shares message content with the server.

Telegram does so by default, you have to opt in to keep messages private from the server.

You also see a lot of people criticizing the design of the secure Telegram protocol and praising the Signal protocol. There were some stories about governments actively compromising Telegram's security. There haven't been any about Signal.

So if you are worried about privacy more than UI and rich functionality, the choice seems clear enough.

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#52

Post by saycheese »

pwelch wrote: post #19

I found a weird issue on a friends phone when I suggested they download it for iOS. It says "This item is no longer available". They were able to download other apps from the store. When emailing Signal support they said nothing was wrong on their end. Still havent figured out why my friend cant download Signal from Apple App Store.

What is the device and its version? What iOS version is being used?

At the very least Signal requires iOS 8.0 or later.

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#53

Post by maxerickson »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #42
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #37

A problem for some people with Signal is that it requires you to use a phone number, and they may not want to disclose theirs. You can set up an SMS gateway number just for this purpose, but you shouldn't need such workarounds.

> A problem for some people with Signal is that it requires you to use a phone number, and they may not want to disclose theirs. That's true, although those of us with unlocked phones can purchase "throwaway" SIM cards with distinct phone-numbers fairly easily with cash, use the number for secure communications only, throw the card away, and then go back to our public lives.

That will expose your IMEI and not really protect you from people that would be tracking you based on metadata.

You gotta burn the phone.

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#54

Post by billyvg »

My friends and I have used GroupMe (which is owned by Skype) for a few years now and some of us wanted to migrate due to privacy. We tried out Signal, but there were some major usability problems in you intend to use it as a "group chat" replacement. My biggest issue with it is that there is no mute feature for iOS. Yes you can turn off notifications at the iOS level, but I want the ability to only have @-mentions to have access to notifications.

I made us switch to WhatsApp instead as I think the usability/privacy balance was better (for our use case).

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#55

Post by m3ta »

lima wrote: post #48
unicornporn wrote: post #4

Or you could download https://wire.com/ which allows developers to build their own clients and still use their infrastructure. Also, it doesn't force you to use a phone number for registration. It supports audio/video calls. Also, if you're really privacy minded, it doesn't need Google Play Services. That way it can be used in CopperheadOS.

It doesn't have the scrutiny regarding cryptography and implementation that Signal has had.

They claim to have secure end-to-end encryption. In fact, I would say using wire.com is better than Signal because Signal does not make any guarantee of anonymity.

With the wire desktop app you can take steps to anonymize your connection to their server, although on a mobile device it's probably roughly equivalent to Signal.

Also, here is a handy chart that compares the differences between these two services (and other similar competitors). https://wire.com/privacy/

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#56

Post by zedred »

blunte wrote: post #6

Why isn't anyone talking about Wire? https://wire.com/ The little I've used it, I found it pleasant and effective. But it almost seems like there is a campaign to ignore Wire; nearly every article written about Signal and alternatives fails to even mention Wire.

That's like saying there's a targeted campaign to ignore Skype because these articles don't mention it. You might like Wire, but it's not an app that people concerned with privacy should be using.

They have done a bunch of shady things:

1. They lied about having end-to-end encryption in their app: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2855745/new-communications-ap...

2. They lied about being open source for years.

3. They lied about being based in switzerland.

They also have serious problems with their app:

1. The "encrypted" calls leak enough information to be able to reconstruct the audio.

2. Many features in the app, like GIF search, transmit plaintext directly back to Wire.

3. They rolled their own crypto, and experts disapprove of the choices they made.

Journalists who write articles like this and don't mention Wire are doing their job. They've consulted with experts and aren't spreading misinformation.

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