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Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#951
post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let’s not forget that Telegram backdoored their encrypted chat implementation and got caught.

Link.

https://m.habr.com/ru/post/206900/

FiloSottile described it as “The most backdoor-looking bug I’ve ever seen” https://twitter.com/filosottile/status/987376021589692416?s=...

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#953

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much worse protocol, but much better company.

... but still a company that you have to "trust". I'd rather have a protocol that will allow me to not trust anyone and still be secure/private by default.

Then use neither. No protocol allows you to not trust the implementor, and WhatsApp has shown signs of accessing keys.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#954

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Weird hand-rolled crypto protocol of questionable quality (MTProto). Probably fine in practice, but leaves a bad taste in your mouth, and their marketing to prove it made it worse. It has been through a few revisions since initial scrutiny. - Only Secret Chats are E2EE. Normal use is just subject to transport encryption. However, this is true for any platform with server-side chat history.

"leaves a bad taste in your mouth" - May be you should not try to eat a protocol ?

I'm unsure if you're unfamiliar with this phrasing or are simply trolling.

If the latter, well played.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#955

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's more, several cell phone operators' plans include unlimited WhatsApp, but only a few GB of other data... meaning when your data limits are reached you can still use WhatsApp for the rest of the month, but not i.e. Signal or Telegram. That makes is rather hard to convince people to switch. isn't this illegal? Portugal had such a problem, but i don't think anything happened since this: https://news.ycombinator…

It's zero-rating, which is a loophole to go around most net neutrality laws. Governments would have to patch that loophole or enforce a stricter interpretation of net neutrality laws, but then everybody would hate them because they'd be banning free stuff.

what do you mean by zero-rating?

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#956
post #283

Where is the "Don't switch" option? Because as much as I hate that Facebook bought them, they're part of what I would call "critical social infrastructure." Asking to leave WhatsApp is like cancelling your contract with your ISP and going offline just because you don't like the company.

Well, I don't know where parent is located, but here in Brazil they are pretty much right. Everybody has WhatsApp... it's assumed that if you have a phone you have WhatsApp. A lot of financial transactions are conducted by doing a bank transfer and then sending the receipt via WhatsApp. The schools send essential messages to parents via WhatsApp. During lockdowns, stores were taking delivery orders via WhatsApp. What…

Actually I think the EU recently passed a law that bans not counting data use toward specific domains to allow competition. It makes much sense with your comment.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#957

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you running Element on? These issues make no sense. I run multiple clients on several devices, not experiencing such things.

PCs, using the web version. One is "Verify your login" with no option to verify, only skip. The next one is "Are you sure you want to skip?", which is insulting/ironic because skipping is the only option. The third one is "Help us improve Element", which doesn't accept a no and keeps asking again and again. And just now I closed element and trying to open it again results in a white page.

> One is "Verify your login" with no option to verify, only skip.

The idea is to verify the new login on ANOTHER session, if available. This is required for reading encrypted messages. When you see this message a notification will show up on all of your other Element devices asking you to verify that new session (using a QR code or a bunch of emojis). You can also select "This wasn't me - your account may be compromised", which gives you a hint what to do next (change passwords, etc).

My best guess here is that you have some old sessions lingering around, which you should remove from your account once logged in. However you do need your Security Phrase or Security Key to recover your account, which creates a new verified session and then you can read your old encrypted messages, too.

> "Help us improve Element", which doesn't accept a no and keeps asking again and again.

Can't reproduce this, sorry.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#958

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't written anything up anywhere, but I have a rough outline of it - I can pull it together today and see if it's consumable by others. If you're at all familiar with the tools, they're deployed in their most vanilla capacities. The grief for me was the tiny amount of configuration each piece needed to fit with everything else. Components: postgres, Synapse (Matrix server), Signald (Signal client daemon), mautr…

> I can pull it together today and see if it's consumable by others. That would be great since I have no idea at all.

I didn't get around to actually doing something nice, but rather than leave things hanging I dumped my docker-compose file + some notes (that might be mostly useless) here: https://controlc.com/fbe73ad3. When I move it to a different machine, as this was originally just out of curiosity until it worked so well, I'll make sure to write something more usable up.

It's been ~6 weeks since I set it up and it's been working since the first time without any modifications, so I honestly forget some of what I did. The general flow is: configure the bridges (config.yaml), integrate them with Synapse (registration.yaml), add your Matrix user, then configure the bridge users.

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#959

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to think the problem is that "the nerds" have failed the rest of the people. People used to listen to us about computer stuff. Then computers became usable without us. Then smartphones arrived. We gladly were relieved of our obligations, but also of our influence. It's too late to go back. People are already used to the trade-offs, convenience rules above all. People may be "sort of concerned" about privacy, b…

No, the nerds have not failed us. The founders of WhatsApp has failed us by selling for FU money. I was happy paying them a fee in the beginning. Then authorities have failed us by aproving the merger.

Maybe they didn't fail us... Wikipedia: On February 21, 2018, Moxie Marlinspike and WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton announced the formation of the Signal Foundation

Re: Poll: Switching from WhatsApp

#960

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, it's not like "the nerds" can build a better product in terms of UX anyway, and definitely can't market it better. Besides, who says "the nerds" are trustworthy anyway? They keep arguing among each other about which operating system or programming language is best, and why should we take their advice when software security vulnerabilities keep being discovered? Not disagreeing with your point - it's become too ea…

> Eh, it's not like "the nerds" can build a better product in terms of UX anyway, and definitely can't market it better. Um, the original WhatsApp company was pretty much run by nerds, I thought, who made a product with UX so good they organically built a user base so large that FaceBook paid $16 billion for the company?

Then one of the whatsap co-founders initiated the Signal Foundation! See "2018–present" at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_%28software%29
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