Needs to be updated to show which of my friends use which system
Messenger systems compared by security, privacy, compatibility, and features
91–100 of 242 posts
Re: Messenger systems compared by security, privacy, compatibility, and features
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your points are valid but you didn't mention that OMEMO [1] implements Double Ratchet for XMPP. You can find a list of clients which support OMEMO on https://omemo.top [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OMEMO
That's a fair point, but the fact that there's yet another protocol, not mentioned on the XMPP E2E wiki, kinda plays into the point itself: XMPP has E2E maybe with a bunch of random protocols and the stars (and the people you talk with) need to align _just right_ for all of it to work. I think it would be fair to say that everyone uses WhatsApp and I know what they get, and at this point only XMPP people use XMPP (ex…
These days in practice there are just two E2E protocols in XMPP: OMEMO and OpenPGP, with OMEMO being the default in clients that opt into E2E-by-default and PGP being used by those who know why and when they're using it. Additionally, some clients still implement OTR, and that's pretty much it.
Re: Messenger systems compared by security, privacy, compatibility, and features
#93It's funny and sad that XMPP hits almost all of the points, has been around since 1999 and yet every year someone reinvents the wheel and makes another messenger system. There are what, about 60+ by now. Granted XMPP is not a messenger it's a protocol and a bunch of standards but still it's hard not to laugh.
When Jan and I evaluated XMPP in 2009, we found that it was not very mobile friendly. To provide a couple of examples -- (1) The login path required an inordinate number of round trips (I think it was 4+). This slowed down login quite considerably. (2) XMPP is byte verbose and expensive on mobile networks.
We came to the conclusion that XMPP was built for desktop computers connected to strong internet via LAN connections not for mobile networks. We went on to invent our own protocol which was byte efficient and minimized roundtrips.
Now take all of this with a grain of salt. It is now 2018 and things have changed considerably.
Re: Messenger systems compared by security, privacy, compatibility, and features
#94Where's the "don't allocate 8 gigabytes and crash the system" feature? (Yeah Slack, I'm looking at you.)
Indeed, and for "compatibility" it doesn't really say anything about the quality of the software for that system. Signal, for example, doesn't have a native iOS app and it shows.
It definitely does - I use it daily. Searching for ‘Signal’ on the App Store brings it back as the first result.
Re: Messenger systems compared by security, privacy, compatibility, and features
#95It's funny and sad that XMPP hits almost all of the points, has been around since 1999 and yet every year someone reinvents the wheel and makes another messenger system. There are what, about 60+ by now. Granted XMPP is not a messenger it's a protocol and a bunch of standards but still it's hard not to laugh.
When Jan and I evaluated XMPP in 2009, we found that it was not very mobile friendly. To provide a couple of examples -- (1) The login path required an inordinate number of round trips (I think it was 4+). This slowed down login quite considerably. (2) XMPP is byte verbose and expensive on mobile networks. We came to the conclusion that XMPP was built for desktop computers connected to strong internet via LAN connect…
> that XMPP was built for desktop computers connected to strong internet via LAN connections not for mobile networks
Oh it definitely was. However, extending it to work well on mobile devices without throwing the whole protocol away turned out to be feasible.
Re: Messenger systems compared by security, privacy, compatibility, and features
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, the problem is how incredibly slow Riot is (and every other client I've tried has almost unusable bad UI, sometimes in combination with being slow). IMO: Text chat with a few emojis and images here and there should not ever be among the things that slows your computer to a crawl. EDIT: I'm speaking of the UI, not the network connection; the latter is sometimes slow too, but that's understandable
It's very likely that what was slow there was not riot, but the server. The Matrix.org homeserver is notoriously overloaded.
Agreed, I set one up and tried to convince people to switch but the latency made it just unusable. It worked fine with a channel or two but if someone tried to join a federated channel it would bring the whole thing to its knees for hours at a time, knocking out the local channels with it.
Re: Messenger systems compared by security, privacy, compatibility, and features
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me, the problem is how incredibly slow Riot is (and every other client I've tried has almost unusable bad UI, sometimes in combination with being slow). IMO: Text chat with a few emojis and images here and there should not ever be among the things that slows your computer to a crawl. EDIT: I'm speaking of the UI, not the network connection; the latter is sometimes slow too, but that's understandable
It's very likely that what was slow there was not riot, but the server. The Matrix.org homeserver is notoriously overloaded.
Matrix.org is so slow it's borderline unusable, that's right. However, while switching to another homeserver (and avoiding federating with big rooms like Matrix HQ) helps a lot, Riot isn't exactly a lightweight client as well.
Re: Messenger systems compared by security, privacy, compatibility, and features
#98I can't see Jitsi there
Re: Messenger systems compared by security, privacy, compatibility, and features
#99Why is Signal scoring so bad?
It's just a yet another closed silo. Its score seems about right relative to other listed networks.
Re: Messenger systems compared by security, privacy, compatibility, and features
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a fair point, but the fact that there's yet another protocol, not mentioned on the XMPP E2E wiki, kinda plays into the point itself: XMPP has E2E maybe with a bunch of random protocols and the stars (and the people you talk with) need to align _just right_ for all of it to work. I think it would be fair to say that everyone uses WhatsApp and I know what they get, and at this point only XMPP people use XMPP (ex…
Fair enough, but this is kind of inherent for anything based on open standards. Was your email encrypted? It depends on whether the sending and receiving mailserver support TLS. Is your website visit perfect-forward-secret? Depends on whether your browser and the webserver support modern cipher suites. Is your DNS request encrypted? Only if your OS and your DNS server support DNSSEC or DoH. These are valid challenges…
How do I know my XMPP client is actually doing what it says? Are you saying the provenance for my XMPP client is fundamentally better than that of the WhatsApp app?