Any communication tool that runs on a closed-source OS like Windows or iOS can certainly not be trusted.
Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal
81–90 of 247 posts
Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
We'll agree to disagree. If he said "Please don't use our servers with your custom client, shit might break. You could run your own infra and keep it up to date with us and we'll federate", this would be reasonable. Instead, if you read that thread a bit more he throws up his hands and says federation is a thing of the past because he had a bad experience with CM. Yeah, because we don't still use federated standards…
Yes, and because it's a federated protocol, it still sends every damn thing in cleartext by default.
Federation does not require things to be transmitted in cleartext by default. Don't know where you're pulling that from.
Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal
#83I'm worried about the freedom of dissenting opinion in civil society from surveillance, not the privacy of my messages. Privacy is something I would easily give up for such freedom. Signal seems to me to one tool in a large profile to maintain freedom of information dissemination and information gathering activity. It seems to me that speaking to a large number of people anonymously is not possible with any of the ex…
> I'm worried about the freedom of dissenting opinion in civil society from surveillance
A good reason to support Wikileaks.
Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal
#84I'm worried about the freedom of dissenting opinion in civil society from surveillance, not the privacy of my messages. Privacy is something I would easily give up for such freedom. Signal seems to me to one tool in a large profile to maintain freedom of information dissemination and information gathering activity. It seems to me that speaking to a large number of people anonymously is not possible with any of the ex…
>It seems to me that speaking to a large number of people anonymously is not possible with any of the existing tools
NNTP, mixmaster remailers, and mail-to-news gateways.
Old school. Those were the days.
Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal
#85There are a lot of people on this thread crapping on Signal for its various flaws and downsides. It's nice to be smarter and more informed than everyone, but for the rest of us we really need advice about what we SHOULD do if we want a baseline amount of privacy from mass surveillance. I'm honestly asking here--I don't have the knowledge that many in this community do about the exact risk of Signal requiring Google P…
The Tox project is specifically designed to meet your usability requirements.
There were also forks of Signal which fixed the privacy issues, however Moxie Marlinspike (the founder of Open Whisper Systems) ordered them to cease and desist.
Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal
#86I ditched Signal in favour of WhatsApp given I believe the tech behind it was the same and the fact that a lot of my contacts are already on WhatsApp. The NYT article indicates that WhatsApp is still able to collect more information than Signal does collect.
The difference is you never know when Whatsapp may switch off that end-to-end encryption.
Second, Signal only stores account creation date and I believe account deletion, or some other super-basic info like that. But that's it. Meanwhile, not only does Whatsapp collect much more metadata, including the groups of which you're part, but it has also started sharing that data with Facebook recently.
I'm not saying you should stop using Whatsapp, though. I still think it's a better alternative to iMessage/Hangouts/Skype/Telegram. But at the same time you should slowly transition your most important contacts to Signal, too. One nice extra feature Signal has over Whatsapp now is Snapchat-like disappearing messages, so at least you may be able to convince some friends with that.
Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal
#87But downloading Signal after news like these will tag people as trying to hide something from the state.
Not only tag, but also get their identity and possibly use backdoors, because Signal is only on Google Play, which in order to access it requires a gazillion identifying data. Signal is a joke if your adversary is NSA and its likes. You cant run Signal unless you give up who you are, and that you are using it, and its not very difficult to analyze _when_ you receiveor send a message due to the Signal requiring google…
Not everyone's threat model is nation-state adversaries. Often times it is simple theft, coercion, snooping friends/family, etc.
What messaging system would your recommend instead? Riot? Tox? Last I checked, neither were nearly as polished and feature-complete as Signal. In my use case, unless it is good enough to become a daily driver, many people won't even bother with it. What good is a messaging system that nobody else uses?
Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal
#88I continue to be disappointed by headlines like, "Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal" which implies that only some people should be worried about privacy.
You'd think that the revelations about the NSA, things like the UK law that requires ISPs to collect and store your Internet browsing history would have more people "worried" but yet it's still pretty much a lost cause to try to explain to smart friends why this stuff matters.
Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal
#89I still haven't been able to register to Signal. It always fails with "error establishing connection with server". Does anyone want to suggest how I could get this working?
I believe it also has a voice call option. Have you tried that?
Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal
#90I'm worried about the freedom of dissenting opinion in civil society from surveillance, not the privacy of my messages. Privacy is something I would easily give up for such freedom. Signal seems to me to one tool in a large profile to maintain freedom of information dissemination and information gathering activity. It seems to me that speaking to a large number of people anonymously is not possible with any of the ex…
> I'm worried about the freedom of dissenting opinion in civil society from surveillance, not the privacy of my messages. Privacy is something I would easily give up for such freedom.
I see these two subjects as being inseparable. Before I feel comfortable asserting a dissenting opinion in a public forum, I would much rather discuss the subject among my peers where I don't feel I will be immediately eviscerated for a poorly constructed thought. If I don't feel that I have any privacy, I'm more likely to be subject to chilling effects.