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

element.io

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

#391

Post by skinnymuch »

briffle wrote: post #143
personjerry wrote: post #35

Back in the day before the rise of Facebook, there was an open source service that combined all the popular messaging protocols - MSN, AoL, IRC, etc. It was called Pidgin[0], and it never got particularly big. I see the same thing here. While it's interesting, I'm failing to see what the use case is. What's the niche that needs this solved in a big way? [0] https://www.pidgin.im/

The Glory days, when both Google Talk and Facebook used XMPP, and you can run one client to chat with all of them. We ran Prosidy and Pidgin at my old job, and it worked great for our company chat server.

Facebook group chats were xmpp too? I thought they never were

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

#393

Post by skinnymuch »

ho_schi wrote: post #55

This kind of stuff never works reliable of even fully. Because? There is no standard. And especially Telegram and WhatsApp will have absolutely no interest in keeping it working reliable. If you send your data anyway over this questionable services you're already in a concerning situation adding more possibilities for failure doesn't help. I use Matrix and it is certainly a good thing and the connections to other stu…

Signal would have no interest before Telegram. Which one is more of a walled garden? Not Telegram.

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

#394

Post by skinnymuch »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #197
rrrrrrrrrrrrr wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is desktop and web clients for WhatsApp by now tho

And they're broken broken broken, and such by design. 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 p…

The WhatsApp beta is better. I hated the previous one so much I’m relieved for anything better. It still isn’t great.

Isn’t Hangouts dead?

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

#395

Post by juliansark »

feanaro wrote: post #338
KAMSPioneer wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hahaha of course not. I don't really propose an alternative. I'm just lamenting the situation and trying to provide context to the Element CEO about why the original commenter, and people like him, might not be 100% jazzed about the democratization of technology that, in terms of message _security_, is a step backwards. Doesn't mean I'm in favor of such ridiculous things as you've suggested here.

> jazzed about the democratization of technology that, in terms of message _security_, is a step backwards. Well, you can always switch to Matrix and have democratized and secure native messaging which uses a cryptographic protocol comparable to Signal. ;)

Many of us have, and painfully if I might add, finally convinced people to abandon insecure messengers and move to something like Signal. Now the solution is to tell them to abandon Signal in favor of Matrix? I'll pass.

Also, obligatory xkcd: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png

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

#396

Post by tentacleuno »

Arathorn wrote: post #313
colbyhub wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure what exactly they were referring to, but here are some of them: https://github.com/libremonde-org/paper-research-privacy-mat...

sneak’s pet issue is https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/11655 : that element web assumes that you want to log into the matrix.org homeserver by default unless you change its config to default to a different one. The libremonde research is over 2 years old now, and the valid bits of it were addressed at the time ( https://matrix.org/blog/2019/09/27/privacy-improvements-in-s... )

> element web assumes that you want to log into the matrix.org homeserver

Ahh. Seems like an easier problem to fix then. Doesn't Element Android remove that assumption and let you choose?

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

#397

Post by JasonFruit »

axelthegerman wrote: post #377
JasonFruit wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Signal is better than Signal over these bridges, and it's easy too. Just because you don't want to run your own service doesn't mean you have to choose a poor option over a pretty good one.

But not everyone I talk to is on Signal. And I don't want to remember which app to open to message a certain person. What's the difference between Element offering these bridges, people deploying their own bridges or others having 3rd party clients that you can't trust with your E2E encryption?

Nothing makes that better, you're right. I prefer to just remember who uses what and act accordingly, but you choose convenience instead — and both are reasonable choices.

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

#398

Post by anticensor »

drummer wrote: post #252
0xdeadb00f wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Element CEO here, this comment thread made my day!

Element CEO here, I don't know wtf got into us breaking Signal E2EE, I am stepping the fuck down.

The username of the actual Element CEO is "Arathorn".

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

#399

Post by dtparr »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #367
dtparr wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I can't vouch for WhatsApp's implementation of course, the capability could easily maintain e2e encryption by just forwarding those 5 messages directly to WhatsApp admins. E2E just means it gets to your recipient without being exposed on the way. It doesn't mean they can't take and then re-distribute it to others.

That is a slippery slope. Are you SURE WhatsApp doesn't auto forward all communications to itself AFTER the users read them? That too silently so you have no way of knowing

As I said, I'm not vouching for WhatsApp's implementation. What I'm saying is that having the ability to report messages does not mean they're not doing e2e exactly like they say. It doesn't provide any information on that point.

If they were going to look at all your messages, of course, waiting until the end user gets it is somewhat unnecessary, they could just get them straight from the sender since they're both "E's" in the e2e. But that's true of any messaging client. Unless you're inspecting the code and building your own binaries, you either have to choose to trust what they're saying or not (or I guess just don't care if it's not relevant to you). But again, that's not WhatsApp specific.

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

#400

Post by tao_oat »

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…

If privacy is truly important to you, then you'll manually encrypt messages in your head using a one-time pad. Can't trust any program you didn't write yourself, including the compiler! /s

> Security and convenience are almost always in conflict

I think this is less true than people tend to think. See e.g. Signal/WhatApp rolling out relatively seamless E2EE to billions of people -- that was hard to imagine just a few decades ago!

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