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Show HN: Share It, Anonymously with Self Destruct Messages

pastenow.me

11–20 of 68 posts

Re: Show HN: Share It, Anonymously with Self Destruct Messages

#11
post #2

Hi, normally i dont post at all. But this is my attempt to share pieces of information anonymously that expires in a certain time. Site is made in Angular and and the backend is a simple thread safe dictionary that resets every 24 hours. It is by no means a commercial solution to any problem. This is something i came up with half an hour of dev work, coz i could not find anything similar.

Just fyi, going to „https://pastenow.xn--me-x2t without the „www“ just gets me to a „Hi“ page without any content.

Re: Show HN: Share It, Anonymously with Self Destruct Messages

#12
I never really got the point of (digital) self destructing messages, since the reader can easily just copy the text/data, i.e. destruct only means not available anymore after future point in time. So you're just relying on the receiver of the message to follow protocol -- as always.

Re: Show HN: Share It, Anonymously with Self Destruct Messages

#16
post #12

I never really got the point of (digital) self destructing messages, since the reader can easily just copy the text/data, i.e. destruct only means not available anymore after future point in time. So you're just relying on the receiver of the message to follow protocol -- as always.

I use it a lot with my friends (Signal) when speaking in very sensitive subjects instead of deleting messages manually you just make sure that messages will not be available after a specific time so you are safe if someone hacked your phone. and yes it's very useful if both parties agreed to it. is not security against the one who are chatting with but the one who might access your data one day.

Re: Show HN: Share It, Anonymously with Self Destruct Messages

#17
post #16
post #12

I never really got the point of (digital) self destructing messages, since the reader can easily just copy the text/data, i.e. destruct only means not available anymore after future point in time. So you're just relying on the receiver of the message to follow protocol -- as always.

I use it a lot with my friends (Signal) when speaking in very sensitive subjects instead of deleting messages manually you just make sure that messages will not be available after a specific time so you are safe if someone hacked your phone. and yes it's very useful if both parties agreed to it. is not security against the one who are chatting with but the one who might access your data one day.

I hadn’t thought of it that way. I guess it’s like shredding mail is completely normal, but in a digital world we’ve become accustomed to the idea that you keep every single letter forever.

Re: Show HN: Share It, Anonymously with Self Destruct Messages

#19

I usually use https://onetimesecret.com/ for sharing secrets. Its code is also on github, so you can install it in your own environment, too, if you don't trust the author. https://github.com/onetimesecret/onetimesecret

I use https://www.saltify.io however I didn't know onetimesecret is open source, this is helpful as we use it a lot at work, seems worth building our own. Thanks for sharing that.

Re: Show HN: Share It, Anonymously with Self Destruct Messages

#20
Taking advantage of this post to ask about this -- can anyone explain to me why Signal can't be implemented as a completely offline-first/PWA web-app.

If we throw away the more advanced requirements of perfect forward secrecy, non repudiation, ratcheting for groups, non repudiation, why is it a bad idea to get 80% of the way there with basic offline-first/WPA (+/- secure enclave, WebAuthN, whatever else) messages that are stored on peoples' devices, encrypted before being sent out etc.

Excalidraw is an excellent app that's actually already written about this[0], so we know it's possible in some form. There's exciting p2p technology in the browser (ipfs, gun, etc). To reach all the platforms you could use Electron and in the future Tauri (which purports to be less of a drain on system resources), etc.

What am I not seeing about why this fundamentally can't be done and I can enjoy relatively simple encrypted chat without worrying about installing too many things, in a throw-away shell somewhat similar to pastenow.me? Is it just that no one has built it? surely not

NOTE -- I don't mind too much about not having to be online at the same time to share information with someone else, I don't think it's too hard these days to coordinate a time to share initial contact information/status

[EDIT] correct "offline" to "offline-first/PWA" since it was leading to confusion, didn't include the "-first" enough places, clearly.

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