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Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

signal.org

161–170 of 350 posts

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#161
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, Skype seems to be the go-to solution for talking to infrequent business contacts. If you don't want to give somebody your personal number or your WhatsApp or similar, and they're not on your slack, but you want something quicker than email then Skype is the usual solution. If you suggest some app they don't already know, it might feel like you're inconveniencing your contact. but everybody knows skype an…

What about something like https://appear.in ?

yeah, looks cool. never heard of it before.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#162
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but decentralization is a difficult problem. I think eventually it will become like email, where everyone just uses GMail. NAT, Firewall, etc all make it very difficult to do true P2P as well.

>I think eventually it will become like email, where everyone just uses GMail. Or Outlook(Office365), Ymail, Zoho, GMX, iCloud, Yandex, Proton.

Or Posteo, Mailbox.org, Tutanota, Riseup.net, etc.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#163
post #45

Just to get a sense of the track record here, Signal Protocol powers: * Facebook/WhatsApp * Google/Allo * Microsoft/Skype * Signal Signal is also the basis for the protocols for Wire (Proteus) and Matrix (Olm).

Don't forget EFF also gave it high grades. What I also would like to see is meta-data eliminated in chat, without having to bring up a Tor server on your phone. Build it into the client/software, make it invisible.

The EFF's handing out of 'grades' for this stuff is probably something everyone is better off forgetting.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#164
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think eventually it will become like email, where everyone just uses GMail. Or Outlook(Office365), Ymail, Zoho, GMX, iCloud, Yandex, Proton.

Or Posteo, Mailbox.org, Tutanota, Riseup.net, etc.

Or self-hosted.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#167
post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love this. The more encryption is used, the less journalists talking to their sources, lawyers talking to their clients, etc. will stand out.

Unfortunately most of this is opt-in and not opt-out. Opting in for E2E encryption in a Facebook message really stands out.

Facebook has that? I can't find it.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#168
post #95
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't say I am really happy about it. The more the Signal protocol is used the more money is spend on attacking it.

"If you haven't been hacked by the Chinese you got to ask yourself, does the shit you're doing really even matter?" I prefer for Signal to be attacked and to matter than to be unattacked and to be irrelevant.

Indeed, it's incredibly selfish and naive to depend on security by obscurity here when you can significantly up the bar from basically one step above full-text all-access for every global spy agency... to a serious encryption system.

Regardless, the exposure ship sailed long ago anyway when WhatsApp with their billions of users, including plenty of terrorist groups in the middle east and africa, decided to adopt the platform.

Additionally, breaking crypto systems like this in practice, if possible, pretty much always means targeted attacks. Which is a significant difference from the type of mass surveillance which Skype et al currently allow.

Even Blackberry bragged about building a system for the NSA/CSEC to provide real-time data access to every BBM being sent in the Toronto area during G20. It's very likely that Skype has a similar system and this change (should) make that fundamentally infeasible.

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#169

The thing is. How will Microsoft and Skype handle backdoors now. As far as I understood the reason Microsoft broke Skype so badly was because they used centralised servers with backdoors for countries who wanted them. Not always the good countries. But this. This baffles me. Deeply.

Wikipedia: "Signal relies on centralized servers that are maintained by Open Whisper Systems."

Re: Signal partners with Microsoft to bring end-to-end encryption to Skype

#170
Maybe a good opportunity to remember what is the main mission of Signal/Open Whisper Systems: they realized at the time that it was extremely complicated for non-technical people to use tools secure enough and respecting your privacy (PGP...), and that the tools used by everyone (Whatsapp, Messenger...) were popular because they were fun and easy to use.

They believed that everyone should be able to have an easy way to communicate with everyone, with a nice UI/UX, AND have an app secure and respectful of your privacy. And this, leaded to the Signal protocal and the Signal app .

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