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> To connect your WhatsApp account, scan the QR code below: > Open WhatsApp on your mobile device. > Go to "Linked devices" > Press "Link a device". > Scan the code below.
Would pay money to get rid of Facebook software in my devices.
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(Element CEO here). Honestly, it depends on your threat profile. Any kind of bridge has to inevitably MITM your conversations in order to work, and we’ve tried to spell that out in all the product info about Element One. If you want to avoid your E2EE conversations on Signal or WhatsApp being relayed via a service like Element One (because you’re an activist or whatever), then your options are to not bridge at all, o…
> (because you’re an activist or whatever) How about because I'm a regular person, and I don't want everything I say analyzed by the federal government and stored in perpetuity? I'm increasingly repulsed by this notion that unless I'm doing something illegal or in opposition the the ruling party, encryption is just a luxury. Encryption is for anyone with any desire to express themselves honestly without modifying the…
> I'm increasingly repulsed by this notion that unless I'm doing something illegal or in opposition the the ruling party, encryption is just a luxury.
Making encryption and privacy a common thing is important to maintain the anonymity of those who have something to hide for various reasons. It's the same as law enforcement using dubious methods: We don't object because we're criminal, we object because we're not (i.e. and don't want to risk false charges).
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I want this to take off. I'm tired of having to follow trends because people suddenly think there's a new shinyshinytrendy thing around: IRC to ICQ to MSN to Skype to Google Talk to Facebook Messenger to Whatsapp to Signal. Pidgin is good (I also miss the ancient Trillian, even though it was closed source), but limited to a local device. There are XMPP Transports as well for these (see https://git.eta.st/eta/whatsxmp…
> for encryption fans, I've been wondering for a long time now: why would you trust ANY 3rd party with your so sensitive data instead of running your own service? Are you not aware of OMEMO for XMPP? we ran our own XMPP server for over 10 years using the "off the record" plugin for end to end encryption. Development seem to basically stop on open chat clients a few years ago and everything started getting crufty. (I…
All of these work fine with OMEMO (the iOS ones gained better OMEMO and push support in the past few months) and message history retrieval between clients. Gajim doesn't do inline images, but the rest do.
I occasionally use profanity as a console client and that recently had message archive support land in Git.
So, yeah, no idea what you mean by developers giving up - if anything, the ecosystem has greatly improved (minus group OMEMO on iOS).
Oh, and Dino got support for doing encrypted calls to Conversations a few months ago: https://fosstodon.org/@dino/106228549009869402
Let's save the NSA the trouble of hacking into all our secure chat clients and just drop our authentication for everything into an app they made.
I just have a really hard time understanding who this is targeting. If you're on average more willing to sacrifice privacy over ease of use, you're very likely not using Signal or Matrix anyway. So if you're not, but you're using both WhatsApp and Telegram, how is using two apps a big enough problem to set up a third one? Even if we disregard that, I can honestly say that I don't think using four separate apps is a p…
I think "on average more willing to sacrifice privacy over ease of use" is probably a reasonable description of me. I'm not a fan at all of FB though, I have absolutely no trust in them at all. As such, I tried to get my world moved from WhatsApp to Signal. Inevitably I didn't succeed completely (although more than I expected) but now I'm split between those two. Plus I have some people who only communicate via FB messenger, and a few friends on Discord.
To message someone I first have to remember which platform they prefer and then find it in my folder of chat apps. It's not an insurmountable problem obviously, but it does add friction. If I can have that all in one place, cross-platform with a decent UX then that's definitely worth $5 a month to me, plus all the bonuses:
* I am actually moving in a more privacy focused direction. Yes I understand the caveats with bridges, but being on Matrix means that I can start a (slow) process of moving my interactions onto it * I don't have to worry about backing up my Signal messages (which is a pain to have automatically sync 'offsite' from your phone) * I can use it as my IRC client (with message history hanging around), etc.
Let me put it another way - I've wanted to be on Matrix for a while but haven't quite managed it. I like the decentralised philosophy, both from a technical perspective and a privacy one but every time I've signed up it hasn't been worth it and/or it's too painful. This gets it over the hump for me (if it's as promised).
It doesn't look to be as good as it sounds. Privacy matters aside, you still have to keep WhatsApp installed on your phone. > To connect your WhatsApp account, scan the QR code below: > Open WhatsApp on your mobile device. > Go to "Linked devices" > Press "Link a device". > Scan the code below. Would pay money to get rid of Facebook software in my devices.
I fully understand that for many, this is not an acceptable security risk. It may have technical compromises. For me, Whatsapp is used by my non-technical in-laws for the simple reason of "because everybody uses it". I find whatsapp extremely impractical (I communicate better via large ergonomic keyboard on my computer, vs via 1.5"-wide screen; to each their own), so anything that makes Whatsapp and other proliferati…
There is desktop and web clients for WhatsApp by now tho
Current app uses Phone as primary and allows for one other-non-phone-device. If you try to log in on e.g. your tablet and computer, or switch between them often, you'll hit any amount of trouble and will get locked out of account.
The current beta has enhancements for multi-device support which may support several non-phone-devices at the same time, even if your phone is offline for short period of time. But it's buggy and your Phone is still your primary and it still won't allow you to sign up without one (it assumes Phone is Me and my life centers around my phone, which is true for my in-laws but not for me:), and the list of limitations is sky high and likely to remain that way.
Whatsapp fundamentally prioritizes end to end encryption; primacy of phone; and convenience of contacts for privacy-non-conscious, over everything else. It is good for those who highly value end to end encryption, for reasons of need or principles.
For those who need multi-device support, Whatsapp is way way way worse than other chat services of today or 1990s. Right now, I am logged in to Hangouts on three computers, tablet, phone and Galaxy Note (whatever we call that these days:). I am available via Hangouts whatever I do and wherever I am. And frankly I find it more private as it doesn't advertise my existence to all my contacts and siphon them off, doesn't require my phone number which is one of my most private pieces of identifying information, and provides me actual privacy and anonymity if I choose, but that's a whole other discussion.
Whatsapp does not, and will for foreseeable future not support my use case. It may or may not be rare, it may or may not be something anybody else thinks is important, but Phone is not the centre of my existence or my sole & preferred method of communication, and as such whatsapp is completely unusable for me. I may be 1% or 0.00001%, and I'm open about that, but this whole notion of "Whatsapp totally works on multi-device" is just getting tiring to misspell - it's right on their FAQ that it is counter-indicated by design by current production version.
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Why do you need to “check them” in the first place though? And yes, I can understand that for some people the inability to easily transfer and collect those conversations is a problem, but for many people (imo probably more people) the ephemeral nature of these messages is a feature, not a problem to be solved. At least that’s why I use Signal over Messenger, for example.
> Why do you need to “check them” in the first place though? I have this problem; most Android apps send background notifications via Google's Firebase Cloud Messaging instead of rolling their own services. (Signal is an exception to this.) So, if you're unwilling to use Google Play services (or us an OS which doesn't support it), you're fucked and will not receive background notifications. The primary reason I use b…
I don't know about WhatsApp, but at least Telegram and Threema can fallback to polling if push notifications aren't available. With polling there is of course the trade off between battery usage and message delay, but you shouldn't miss any messages.
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You don't know that when you message someone on Signal it's for their eyes only. What you know is that unless their device is compromised, it is up to them to decide who can read the messages that you send to them. Thus the situation with the bridge is not in reality different from the situation now.
No - the bridge could be compromised without your conversation partner’s involvement. I.e. the bridge is a vulnerability that enables man in the middle attacks.
Bridges don't install themselves in place of platform's messengers - it's the user that has to make an active choice to use one. If you don't trust your partner making a right choice for both of you, you can't really trust them not to tattle on your conversation, or get their computer compromised by generic system-wide malware.
And if the bridges themselves are shoddy? Well, I kind of blame the platforms like Signal and WhatsApp, for forcibly bundling their messaging service and their chat client. Were they to open up their APIs to alternative frontends, they could make it so that those alternative frontends identify themselves to the other party in the conversation, and it would remove the need to develop fully transparent bridges for legitimate use.