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Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

nytimes.com

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Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#181

Post by eggie »

zi0nman wrote: post #65
maxerickson wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Signal never shares message content with the server. Telegram does so by default, you have to opt in to keep messages private from the server. You also see a lot of people criticizing the design of the secure Telegram protocol and praising the Signal protocol. There were some stories about governments actively compromising Telegram's security. There haven't been any about Signal. So if you are worried about privacy m…

Yes I'm seeing a lot of people criticizing Telegram on Twitter and in media. But after doing some research I couldn't find any proof of their claims that Telegram have a broken crypto. You can use secret chats, those messages are not stored on the company server.

I also can't find any proof that the e2e crypto is broken, but crypto nerds sure love to shit on it. I'd love a source indicating otherwise.

The unencrypted messages are certainly not secure, and it's disingenuous of Telegram to market itself as a secure system without being really clear about the limitations.

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#182

Post by [deleted] »

a3n wrote: post #165
james_pm wrote: post #88

I continue to be disappointed by headlines like, "Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal" which implies that only some people should be worried about privacy. You'd think that the revelations about the NSA, things like the UK law that requires ISPs to collect and store your Internet browsing history would have more people "worried" but yet it's still pretty much a lost cause to try to explain to…

That the NSA is able to spy on you is an existence proof that criminals can also spy on you. The downside of becoming known to the NSA is that you can get caught up as an "associate" in someone's drug, criminal or terrorism investigation, and you had no idea that the person was doing anything like that. You might even have no idea that the person exists, since the NSA is "allowed" to go out some number of degrees of…

[deleted]

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#183

Post by nikcub »

I'm glad that infosec has broken out of the era of endlessly debating the imperfections and faults of every solution but instead can clearly recommend practical advice for everyday users that is easy to understand.

Having the NYTimes advocate for crypto so clearly and to such a large audience will make a real and tangible difference to users - more than can be said for the years of online nitpicking by experts.

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#184

Post by revscat »

pdx wrote: post #155
xnull2guest wrote: post #68

I'm worried about the freedom of dissenting opinion in civil society from surveillance, not the privacy of my messages. Privacy is something I would easily give up for such freedom. Signal seems to me to one tool in a large profile to maintain freedom of information dissemination and information gathering activity. It seems to me that speaking to a large number of people anonymously is not possible with any of the ex…

> It seems to me that speaking to a large number of people anonymously is not possible with > any of the existing tools, Signal included While it's still at the testnet stage, I have very high hopes for Maidsafe's SAFEnet. This will allow a completely anonymous internet, providing both users and publishers complete anonymity. Upon release of the actual network, it will live in the wild, just like bitcoin, with no com…

Data distribution is next to meaningless if there is not the accompanying power to affect political change.

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#185

Post by wruza »

uselpa wrote: post #131
zi0nman wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I'm seeing a lot of people criticizing Telegram on Twitter and in media. But after doing some research I couldn't find any proof of their claims that Telegram have a broken crypto. You can use secret chats, those messages are not stored on the company server.

It seems to be official now that Telegram has been hacked over and over again (article in German): https://netzpolitik.org/2016/bundeskriminalamt-knackt-44-tel...

That only happens for non-private chats only if you skipped 2-step verification setup [1]. I'm not telegram's relative, but security is a thing where you have to be educated. You cannot just install 'everyone's most secure' messenger and be productive.

For messenger to gain a MASS of users it has to be 'enter sms-code and go chat'.

For messenger to be SECURE it has to be 'install password manager, set passcode, use 2-factor, use e2e, use self-destruct, always compare keys'. No one will enjoy that. But if you need, you just have it in your regular sexy messenger, not in another ugly alien app that no one knows about, no one has installed, no one's ready to go through all of it.

I think telegram guys got it just right.

  [1] https://telegram.org/blog/15million-reuters

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#186

Post by joecool1029 »

moosingin3space wrote: post #112
zedred wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently switched from Android to iPhone and was pretty surprised by how much lower quality the Signal app is for iPhone than Android. Signal for Android was really amazing, and the switch made me think this could be one reason why so many people seem to speak both highly and poorly of Signal. The iPhone app just unfortunately seems to be way behind the Android app. Not sure why they have prioritized development in…

I think it's because moxie uses Android.

This is the correct answer. Moxie dominates signal-android commits. He doesn't work on the iOS version.

The programmer working on the iOS version left early this year. If you look it was pretty stagnant for awhile with him, only really getting bugfixes. Now they have a new maintainer that's been playing catchup and things really only started to get rolling in the past couple months.

See: https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-iOS/graphs/contribu...

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#187

Post by pdx »

revscat wrote: post #184
pdx wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems to me that speaking to a large number of people anonymously is not possible with > any of the existing tools, Signal included While it's still at the testnet stage, I have very high hopes for Maidsafe's SAFEnet. This will allow a completely anonymous internet, providing both users and publishers complete anonymity. Upon release of the actual network, it will live in the wild, just like bitcoin, with no com…

Data distribution is next to meaningless if there is not the accompanying power to affect political change.

In a democracy, dissemination of information to the voters can theoretically affect political change.

In countries that are not democracies, I'm uncertain what to do with your complaint. Would you dismiss giving oppressed people access to literature, news, entertainment, or technical and scientific information, on the premise that the information is unlikely to allow them to affect political change? I don't believe that premise is true, but even if it were, their lives are still made better, which means it's far from meaningless.

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#188

Post by sctb »

woah wrote: post #111

Their goal is to reduce government secrecy by making it hard to keep things secret. You supported this when it was making the other team look bad and you oppose it now. Republicans have taken the opposite view of Wikileaks, and flip-flopped the other way. At least be honest with yourself a see that your only opinion on the matter is that you don't like the other side.

We detached this flagged subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13132650.

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#189

Post by revscat »

pdx wrote: post #187
revscat wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Data distribution is next to meaningless if there is not the accompanying power to affect political change.

In a democracy, dissemination of information to the voters can theoretically affect political change. In countries that are not democracies, I'm uncertain what to do with your complaint. Would you dismiss giving oppressed people access to literature, news, entertainment, or technical and scientific information, on the premise that the information is unlikely to allow them to affect political change? I don't believe t…

Recent events have disproven the cypherpunk-era belief that freely available, secure communications will lead to a better (read: more rational) world. I don't dismiss the desire to give access. I think its utility has been naively overstated; these same tools can be, and have been, used by old guard oligarchs to maintain and extend their political and economic power.

Re: Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

#190

Post by berdario »

underdown wrote: post #148
berdario wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Iraq war continued for 3 years under the Obama administration. In fact, a few americans even believe that Obama was in office during 9/11,and blame him about everything. I'm also among the people that used to support Wikileaks when they were anti-estabilishment, but I'm now disgusted by them (only marginally because of their involvement in Trump's election: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/media…

What does what a few Americans believe have to do with the comment made?

That it's not difficult at all to "make the \"other team\" look bad", and that the public opinion is easily swayed
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