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I don't trust Signal (2018)

drewdevault.com

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Re: I don't trust Signal (2018)

#11

Post by ColanR »

sneak wrote: post #9
shakezula wrote: post #6

What's the alternative to Signal then? For iOS users?

There is no alternative that provides the ease of use and privacy guarantees. I think the OWS/Moxie hate is misplaced. They’re competing with iMessage and WhatsApp and Instagram and Facebook, and Signal is a much better option than all of those. Let’s be honest: the alternative is that Facebook gets all of our chats in cleartext.

I think Drew responded to that. I thought this was a key quote:

> Off the bat, let me explain that I expect a tool which claims to be secure to actually be secure. I don’t view “but that makes it harder for the average person” as an acceptable excuse. If Edward Snowden and Bruce Schneier are going to spout the virtues of the app, I expect it to actually be secure when it matters - when vulnerable people using it to encrypt sensitive communications are targeted by smart and powerful adversaries....it’s your responsibility to clearly explain the drawbacks and advantages of the tradeoffs you make. If you make broad and inaccurate statements about your communications product being “secure”, then when the political prisoners who believed you are being tortured and hanged, it’s on you.

Re: I don't trust Signal (2018)

#12

Post by AnonHP »

shakezula wrote: post #6

What's the alternative to Signal then? For iOS users?

Depends on what you want. If you want Signal-like security and everything it offers on avoiding collecting data that it can view/analyze, then I'm guessing nothing. Maybe Matrix (matrix.org) with E2E is close enough. Wire (wire.com) is another one that has better features than Signal and also has E2E for all conversations.

Re: I don't trust Signal (2018)

#13

Post by 0d9eooo »

sneak wrote: post #9
shakezula wrote: post #6

What's the alternative to Signal then? For iOS users?

There is no alternative that provides the ease of use and privacy guarantees. I think the OWS/Moxie hate is misplaced. They’re competing with iMessage and WhatsApp and Instagram and Facebook, and Signal is a much better option than all of those. Let’s be honest: the alternative is that Facebook gets all of our chats in cleartext.

I sincerely appreciate this blog post and discussion, as it raises a lot of important and compelling points, but I wish it had had some discussion of alternatives and why.

To me, messaging is a mess at the moment, somewhat like IoT because of lack of solid widely adopted standards (either de facto or de jure).

It's extremely difficult to get friends and family to use something. Most decisions are driven by secondary considerations, like it comes with an OS, or as part of an email or office system, or a gaming system. In some cases it's because "it's what everyone is using".

This shifts the threshold a bit in terms of concerns. What I mean by that is given the inertia involved in moving people to use a messaging system, the bar gets raised in terms of moving people off because of network effects. It's hard enough to get any friends or family to use Signal as an alternative to other things; convincing them to switch again introduces other problems.

I'd prefer something that can be used in more decentralized way, but that has its own issues in terms of syncing and always-on problems. And as security increases, more and more inconveniences are introduced -- it might be worth it, but the case still has to be made implicitly or explicitly to friends and family.

Again, not saying these kinds of discussions shouldn't happen, but they often seem kind of theoretical to me or like they're missing the point because of bigger issues with the messaging ecosystem in general. If you're not going to be able to use Signal anyway because everyone you know is using Whatsapp or iMessaging, or feel like messenger use is driven by "whatever is most popular" it feels like it's difficult to weigh things like "won't put on fdroid". I'd love to see it on fdroid but where does that rank?

Re: I don't trust Signal (2018)

#14

Post by ColanR »

Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote: post #3

Original from 2018, 467 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17723973 . Not commenting as snark (reposts are ok after all) more to save Dang digging out the link and also to see how many more or less duplicate sentiment comments are made and / or how perceptions have changed.

I thought that first comment had some inappropriately personal things to say about ddvault and his article. It also seemed like they didn't really respond with substance to the what the article said.

Re: I don't trust Signal (2018)

#15

Post by myrion »

sneak wrote: post #7

I really don’t think OWS has the authority to stop forks from using the Signal servers, any more than YC has the authority to dictate that I use Chrome to view HN. There is, of course, the vague language of the CFAA, so I’m not sure I’d want to test this theory, but his demands that forks not use the main centralized servers are, in my opinion, unenforceable bluster.

Might be unenforceable, but they don't have to cater to them and can and will break forked clients for however long it takes those to catch back up. And then Signal gets flak for not hobbling their development processes to the speed of the slowest (somewhat popular) fork.

Re: I don't trust Signal (2018)

#16

Post by ddevault »

sneak wrote: post #7

I really don’t think OWS has the authority to stop forks from using the Signal servers, any more than YC has the authority to dictate that I use Chrome to view HN. There is, of course, the vague language of the CFAA, so I’m not sure I’d want to test this theory, but his demands that forks not use the main centralized servers are, in my opinion, unenforceable bluster.

This doesn't have much value without federation, which would require active support from OWS.

Re: I don't trust Signal (2018)

#18

Post by rglullis »

sneak wrote: post #9
shakezula wrote: post #6

What's the alternative to Signal then? For iOS users?

There is no alternative that provides the ease of use and privacy guarantees. I think the OWS/Moxie hate is misplaced. They’re competing with iMessage and WhatsApp and Instagram and Facebook, and Signal is a much better option than all of those. Let’s be honest: the alternative is that Facebook gets all of our chats in cleartext.

I don't buy it. I've been running my own Matrix homeserver and giving access to non-techy members of my family for years already. Setting up e2e is not automatic, but nothing that my mother couldn't do after 5 minutes of hand-holding.

It is on us with tech skills to help others to get out of any centralized alternative. Ease of use will come with the less technical user base.

Re: I don't trust Signal (2018)

#19

Post by ncmncm »

I reacted to previous posts about this by installing Element (was Riot.im; search for both words) matrix client, setting up a periodic donation to privacytools.io, and making accounts with that as homeserver (chat.privacytools.io) for me and for the rest of the family.

(Previously, I had a Librem.one account, but they don't maintain their server, so I dropped it.)

It works... Still waiting for anyone else I know to come over.

Element really needs to set up as an optional SMS handler, on phones. Probably building in a Signal gateway is needed too. Signal would be nowhere today if it didn't also do SMS. Separate gateways are too clunky.

Re: I don't trust Signal (2018)

#20

Post by Funes- »

I only use phone calls (sync) and e-mail (async) nowadays.There's no other communication channel I would need. I'd only be willing to substitute them with their encrypted, P2P, and open-source counterparts, if they ever come into existence.

Texting, on the other hand, used to be the bane of my existence, as--especially in its current form (free, nested layout, etcetera)--it's one of the most distracting, inefficient, absurdly redundant and useless communication mediums I know.

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