Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

element.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 422 posts

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#261

Post by grassjumper »

jeltz wrote: post #238
noirbot wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want "the utmost privacy". I want something better than raw SMS. I'm not an international secret agent. I encrypt things out of principal more than because I really care if some government force reads them. If a nation-state decides I'm of interest to them for malicious reasons, I'm probably screwed either way.

Then these bridges are fine. Virtually everything is better than raw SMS.

That depends a lot. In a civilized country with low risk of 2G downgrade attacks and sensible telecom laws/law enforcement restrictions, SMS is a lot more secure and private than many other options.

Obviously still a long way off actual secure communication though.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#262

Post by grassjumper »

ElijahLynn wrote: post #259
tao_oat wrote: post #97

> It’s also worth noting that end-to-end encryption is necessarily broken as messages to (and from) WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram pass across the bridge(s). The bridge(s) operates in Element’s trusted EMS environment, with no content scanning or datamining, but currently bridged conversations are not stored end-to-end encrypted in Matrix (they will be in the future). As a Signal user, I kind of don't want this to tak…

Very good point on not wanting this to take off so that you know if you send it to someone, it is for their eyes only. It does seem like since both Signal and Matrix are open source, including the servers, that there should be a path to let one a Signal user know if they are sending it to a Matrix bridge and the encryption is no more. Also worth noting is that you do need to trust the person on the other end for Sign…

There's a difference between malice and ignorance, though. My mom in her 70s is using Signal, and I don't think I can blame her for not realizing the vulnerability. I doubt most people will read the Element webside that carefully.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#263

Post by KAMSPioneer »

_red wrote: post #233
KAMSPioneer wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's all well and good, but I believe the original complaint was more concerning the second party in the conversation. There's no way for me, a hypothetical person who wants to keep my Signal messages 100% encrypted in the Signal ecosystem, to opt out of my contacts using an Element bridge. Sure, I can go around and tell everyone I know that they shouldn't bridge Signal to Element One because , but there's no way f…

>There's no way for me, a hypothetical person who wants to keep my Signal messages 100% encrypted in the Signal ecosystem, to opt out of my contacts using an Element bridge. This sounds like a made-up concern. How do you stop me from screenshotting your convo and posting on twitter, or just copying and pasting from one app to the next?

Those are distinct from my concern. In your scenarios, I have trusted you to keep the conversation secret, and you betrayed that trust.

My concern is about giving messages in an automatic fashion to a third party, which I'm completely unaware of and have no way of making an informed decision about. The third party could be breached (they run an online service, which is much, much easier to attack than some dude's iPhone).

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#264

Post by grassjumper »

freeopinion wrote: post #241
tao_oat wrote: post #97

> It’s also worth noting that end-to-end encryption is necessarily broken as messages to (and from) WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram pass across the bridge(s). The bridge(s) operates in Element’s trusted EMS environment, with no content scanning or datamining, but currently bridged conversations are not stored end-to-end encrypted in Matrix (they will be in the future). As a Signal user, I kind of don't want this to tak…

If privacy mattered that much to you, you wouldn't depend on Signal to encrypt your messages. You would encrypt them before handing them to Signal. So you should have an encrypted message that you hand to Signal. Signal encrypts it again and hands it to the bridge. Eventually, whether at the bridge or at the other end or wherever, something decrypts the Signal message. Then the person you are communicating with appli…

This is like saying "If you don't sweep the bathroom for bugs/cams, you don't really care about privacy. Why do you bother closing the door"

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#265

Post by TeMPOraL »

hellojesus wrote: post #242
TeMPOraL wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A law like this could regulate businesses out of existence. Only if they didn't change their business model to something less incredibly antisocial than walling people in and serving them ads. There are many ways to operate a communications business on-line. That only the bad one is used in practice is a consequence of it being the most profitable of available options. If it weren't available (say, because of being…

Yes, but what if this is the only way to have a profitable business such as these? Are you okay losing them entirely? More generally, my view of regulation is that it should only exist if there is some quantifiable harm to an involuntary third party (negative externality). Where is the demonstrative harm here, and who is it impacting? Having one friend on FB and another on MySpace, requiring the user to log into each…

> Yes, but what if this is the only way to have a profitable business such as these? Are you okay losing them entirely?

But it isn't. We know it isn't - exchanging text, audio and video messages wasn't invented by adtech giants. Two prime examples:

1) Telephony and mobile telephony operators have strong businesses to this day, despite being made interoperable by law.

2) Non-adtech e-mail providers exist and make money, despite being interoperable and not subsidized by advertising and personal data misuse.

> Where is the demonstrative harm here, and who is it impacting? Having one friend on FB and another on MySpace, requiring the user to log into each platform separately isn't harm.

In my opinion, there is harm - creating unnecessary burden and confusion for everyone, especially non-tech-savvy people. It is tying people down to services via network effects, and then further harming them by exfiltrating their personal data and exposing them to advertising (either directly or indirectly, making the ads more potent thanks to aforementioned personal information).

> The effect is the same as having one friend call you on a phone to communicate and the other only use text.

No, it isn't. It's just having one friend text you, another friend write you a Messenger message, yet another a WhatsApp message, yet another a Telegram message...

> Every single person using these platforms makes a conscious decision to use them given their limitations. Nobody is forcing anyone to use these platforms.

But that's not true at all. People are coerced to use these services, and coerced to stay with them. That's the literal definition of network effect. I have to use WhatsApp/Facebook/whatever because my mom is there and doesn't want yet another chat app, and my local plumber only communicates through it. I have to stay, because neither my mom nor my plumber will move. The more people are trapped in the net, the stronger its hold.

Contrast that with phone and e-mail service: I can communicate with anyone regardless of the provider they use. I don't even need to know what provider they use. And I can switch my providers at any time, and nobody else has to know, or care.

> Instead of passing legislation to fix your problem, how about you just talk to your friends and get them to agree on using a single platform?

These platforms are as successful as they are exactly because your proposed solution is impossible to implement by most people. Again: network effect.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#266

Post by idrios »

freeopinion wrote: post #241
tao_oat wrote: post #97

> It’s also worth noting that end-to-end encryption is necessarily broken as messages to (and from) WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram pass across the bridge(s). The bridge(s) operates in Element’s trusted EMS environment, with no content scanning or datamining, but currently bridged conversations are not stored end-to-end encrypted in Matrix (they will be in the future). As a Signal user, I kind of don't want this to tak…

If privacy mattered that much to you, you wouldn't depend on Signal to encrypt your messages. You would encrypt them before handing them to Signal. So you should have an encrypted message that you hand to Signal. Signal encrypts it again and hands it to the bridge. Eventually, whether at the bridge or at the other end or wherever, something decrypts the Signal message. Then the person you are communicating with appli…

This is a very all or nothing mentality. It's also kind of like saying you should put locks on your locks. Signal's core reason for existing is that it puts a focus on privacy. They say this all over their homepage [0].

One of the founders of WhatsApp donated $50M to Signal [1] out of regret for how WhatsApp shifted away from privacy after being acquired by Facebook.

The entire project is freely visible to anyone on github [2]. They've made it so even if you don't trust their servers, you can set up your own server and clone your own android/ios app, change some settings and have everything hosted yourself.

There's no reason not to expect Signal to maintain the focus on privacy that they've put in thus far.

[0] https://www.signal.org/ [1] https://www.wired.com/story/signal-foundation-whatsapp-brian... [2] https://github.com/signalapp

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#267

Post by ev1 »

hellojesus wrote: post #248
teekert wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it’s not for you but more for those of us forced onto FB’s WhatsApp and their phone book scanning/uploading by social conventions. This presents a way out without giving up the benefits.

Doesn't grapheneos allow some type of sandboxing to wall off your true contacts, etc. for exactly this purpose? https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/nkyzdw/what_is_the...

You know people that have the FB app installed. And all their messages and SMS running through the FB app. And you can't get all of them to stop this madness.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#268

Post by sorenjan »

What's the point of this? Matrix, Signal, and Telegram all have open source clients, so you could make a client that used the native protocols and not route your messages through this third party's servers. Like Pidgin, Miranda IM, Trillian, and others. But I guess a monthly fee and cloud services are the more modern approach.

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#269

Post by [deleted] »

approxim8ion wrote: post #250
pmlnr wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> why would you trust ANY 3rd party with your so sensitive data instead of running your own service? Because end to end encryption means you don't have to trust a third party? The channel goes out of the equation, at least with reference to the content of your messages. Metadata is definitely handled differently by different services but that's a question of threat model.

[deleted]

Re: Element One – All of Matrix, WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram in one place

#270

Post by crossroadsguy »

It’s for power users (assuming it actually works as advertised) - people who constantly keep messaging across apps; either for personal or professional needs. They already have multiple apps on their phones and they have to use them.

Not for people who find two messaging apps too much to have on a phone, or for people who’re talking about privacy.

Post reply on HN