What is the best linux-compatibile open source with encryption alternative at the moment? The wiki page shows that many haven't been updated in quite some time (Twinkle). Does anybody have experience with Blink?
Jitsi is amazing!
Open Letter to Skype from Internet Activists, Journalists and Academics
21–30 of 70 posts
Re: Open Letter to Skype from Internet Activists, Journalists and Academics
#22I have searched and searched for an alternative to Skype, but so far have mostly failed. My situation: - I use Linux on all my desktops/laptops. - I have an Android phone. - My mobile phone bill is usually in excess of £100 per month. - I am usually located in the UK, sometimes elsewhere but almost never in the US. My use cases: - I want to make cheap calls to mobile phone numbers in Ireland, Austria and Australia -…
The first 3 of your requirements would possibly be better served with just a good International calling package on your mobile.
Lebara charge £39 a month for "unlimited" calls to 39 countries, including Ireland, and Australia, and cheap(ish) calls to Austria (and other places). Their call charges are pretty comparable to most VOIP services.
It's certainly worth considering if you're spending >£100 a month on calls.
Re: Open Letter to Skype from Internet Activists, Journalists and Academics
#23I have searched and searched for an alternative to Skype, but so far have mostly failed. My situation: - I use Linux on all my desktops/laptops. - I have an Android phone. - My mobile phone bill is usually in excess of £100 per month. - I am usually located in the UK, sometimes elsewhere but almost never in the US. My use cases: - I want to make cheap calls to mobile phone numbers in Ireland, Austria and Australia -…
The first 3 of your requirements would possibly be better served with just a good International calling package on your mobile. Lebara charge £39 a month for "unlimited" calls to 39 countries, including Ireland, and Australia, and cheap(ish) calls to Austria (and other places). Their call charges are pretty comparable to most VOIP services. It's certainly worth considering if you're spending >£100 a month on calls.
Worth considering for sure and a good idea to investigate similar services more thoroughly.
Unfortunately for Austria mobiles (all rates include VAT):
Lebara: 19p/min
Skype: 11.2p/min (in the £38.99/month for 400 minutes package)
Google Voice: 8.4p/min
Out of the three countries I listed, Austria is the only one I call daily, usually for a minimum of 10 minutes, up to about 20 minutes. Ireland I call infrequently, but SMS up to 10 times per day. Australia I usually call once or twice per week, up to about 45 minutes.
Re: Open Letter to Skype from Internet Activists, Journalists and Academics
#24Whats the deal with Google voice and Google talk on this issue?
Not available in most countries in the world, perhaps?
Re: Open Letter to Skype from Internet Activists, Journalists and Academics
#25I have searched and searched for an alternative to Skype, but so far have mostly failed. My situation: - I use Linux on all my desktops/laptops. - I have an Android phone. - My mobile phone bill is usually in excess of £100 per month. - I am usually located in the UK, sometimes elsewhere but almost never in the US. My use cases: - I want to make cheap calls to mobile phone numbers in Ireland, Austria and Australia -…
For the past 6 years, I've been using VOIPDiscount [1].
Their rate is "unlimited" for 10EUR a month (you can setup auto payment).
The nice feature is that they give you about 200 so called "free days", which means that landlines to most countries will be totally free of charge (mobiles have low rate but you have to pay) up to 200 days from the moment of your purchase. I can confirm this works as I have called my home country in Europe every weekend for couple hours a day talking with family on multitude occasions. They have Android and iPhone app as well. If your folks oversees have landlines, this is a clearly best choice (I do not work for them, just been happy with their service).
Re: Open Letter to Skype from Internet Activists, Journalists and Academics
#26The governments in many countries are monitoring everything that you are doing. It is no longer a fictitious idea about what could be done. They collect and correlate sets of data and they use it for monitoring for abnormal behaviour and find potential threats.
There is nothing that you can do about it. Your only safety is that you are completely irrelevant for them and they keep their mouth shut unless they have a very good reason not to do so.
Re: Open Letter to Skype from Internet Activists, Journalists and Academics
#27What is the best linux-compatibile open source with encryption alternative at the moment? The wiki page shows that many haven't been updated in quite some time (Twinkle). Does anybody have experience with Blink?
I personally like SFLPhone [1]. It's developed by the fine folks from Savoir-faire Linux [2] and supports encryption. Here is a guide how to configure it to encrypt traffic between the client and an Asterisk server [3].
[1] http://sflphone.org/ [2] http://www.savoirfairelinux.com/en/ [3] https://projects.savoirfairelinux.com/projects/sflphone/wiki...
Re: Open Letter to Skype from Internet Activists, Journalists and Academics
#28Has there been any confirmation of the very juicy rumor about Skype and the NSA? Brieftly it is this: The NSA put out a $1 billion RFP to crack the encryption of skype - their inability to listen in on this huge communication channel was really a bummer for the NSA. Microsoft says "Hmm" and buys Skype for $8 billion, re-engineers the archtecture of Skype so that it is centralized rather than P2P and easily decrypted…
Skype has always relied on a central authentication server, which means that anyone with control of that server would be able to MITM any conversation. The recent changes of ownership and centralization of the service have nothing to do with this. Presumably the US government has been able to tap into any Skype conversation they want for a long time.
> would be able to MITM any conversation
Sure, in theory. In practice, eavsdropping on two Skype users required presence on a network route between the callers, which might have been entirely in some random country's Internet segment.
Re: Open Letter to Skype from Internet Activists, Journalists and Academics
#29Open comment to Internet Activists, Journalists and Academics: You're not going to get what you want by piggy-backing on Microsoft's proprietary platform. Specifically if you're an Internet Activists you shouldn't be relying on some company's proprietary tool for disguising your communications. There's plenty of open and secure VoIP clients which coupled with open encryption standards, VPN's etc. will suit your purpo…
I only know about Tor (https://www.torproject.org) which could help. I hope someone else can recommend any others.
Re: Open Letter to Skype from Internet Activists, Journalists and Academics
#30Open comment to Internet Activists, Journalists and Academics: You're not going to get what you want by piggy-backing on Microsoft's proprietary platform. Specifically if you're an Internet Activists you shouldn't be relying on some company's proprietary tool for disguising your communications. There's plenty of open and secure VoIP clients which coupled with open encryption standards, VPN's etc. will suit your purpo…
For those specifically yes. If you're an activist or journalist talking to your sources, you shouldn't be using Skype, period.
However, the letter also tries to make Skype a safer platform for everyone else. For example they are asking for a regular transparency report, the way Google has with Gmail and Google searches. Is that really too much to ask from Microsoft? And don't you think it would benefit a lot of those 600 million people if they found out just how much Skype is being monitored? While (most) people here can be sure Skype is unsafe, do you really get the same impression from "regular" people? Or are they completely unaware of it? I think transparency would help raise awareness about it.