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Worried About the Privacy of Your Messages? Download Signal

nytimes.com

31–40 of 247 posts

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

#31
post #3

I ditched Signal in favour of WhatsApp given I believe the tech behind it was the same and the fact that a lot of my contacts are already on WhatsApp. The NYT article indicates that WhatsApp is still able to collect more information than Signal does collect.

You _assume_ that WhatsApp uses signal and not clear text (or some other broken lib)

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

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an open source client[0]. It's not a "pinky promise". There are valid criticisms of Signal (primarily around the use of the Google Play Services Framework), but your comment seems to be jumping to a lot of conclusions without any research. https://github.com/whispersystems

But, they still expect me to trust the signed binary they send through the App store right? How is that anyway non-proprietary just because there is a Git repo somewhere that may or may not be the same code running on your phone? Can I run a client from the Git repo and still use all of their infrastructure? Until I'm able to do that, it is still their "pinky promise".

> Can I run a client from the Git repo and still use all of their infrastructure?

Yes. You can.

They describe how in the very repo I linked. Your ardent unwillingness to spend the 30-45 seconds it would take to find this out before spouting unwarranted false criticism is quite strange. Do you have some personal issue with OWS?

I really didn't mean to be defending OWS here - I'd much rather see Signal leveraging non-Google APIs in some way and provided via F-Droid (though I have read their arguments against that w.r.t. performance) but I'm astounded at the wilful ignorance here.

If you're genuinely interested in promoting secure messaging, a desire to get your facts straight and answer your own questions instead of assuming the negative should be step 1. Otherwise, you're needlessly steering people away from a tool that could practically improve their privacy.

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

#33
post #3

I ditched Signal in favour of WhatsApp given I believe the tech behind it was the same and the fact that a lot of my contacts are already on WhatsApp. The NYT article indicates that WhatsApp is still able to collect more information than Signal does collect.

One important thing to note is that, as far as I know, WhatsApp backups are stored in plain text. So to have secure messaging, you must disable backups and you must trust that the other people you're messaging have also disabled backups.

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

#34

Use Signal and give them access to all your contacts who may or may not be using Signal. Use their proprietary client and trust them on their pinky promise that they "can't" look at your messages. The deceptive pretense of privacy is worse than no privacy at all. [Edit] - "Use their proprietary client and trust them on their pinky promise" was factually wrong. But, they still expect me to trust the signed binary they…

I think as long as they are GPL, you can use the infrastructure. https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/282

You can, but moxie will throw a temper tantrum about it.

https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

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

#35
post #14

All the privacy solutions on the market are varying degrees of bad (from a privacy/security/freedom perspective), by which I mean they're all flawed in their own ways. Signal requires Google Play Services on Android. That means it's put simply not a privacy messenger. Yes there's crypto, but it's also tied into Whisper Systems' infrastructure, there's no federation. I use Signal reluctantly, and only on IOS. Threema,…

> It's 2016 and our best crypto messenger options are worse than what we had 10 years ago when Skype was peer to peer, or Jabber with federation.

I strongly disagree, Skype has always been a black box. The usability of Signal's crypto is a lot better than it has ever been for Jabber.

> I can understand the reasons for not supporting federation, but I disagree.

Yet you don't address any of the problems with federation.

> What Open Whisper Systems and Wire need to do is open source the server components of their solutions, and try to remove the reliance on servers as much as possible.

https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Server

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

#36

Or you could download https://wire.com/ which allows developers to build their own clients and still use their infrastructure. Also, it doesn't force you to use a phone number for registration. It supports audio/video calls. Also, if you're really privacy minded, it doesn't need Google Play Services. That way it can be used in CopperheadOS.

Do you know how Wire makes money to sustain what they are doing? Don't want to invest my time into something that will eventually sell out and do that opposite of what they stand for today.

On Twitter, they said they plan to sell premium features. They are currently funded by a founder of Skype.

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

#38
post #14

All the privacy solutions on the market are varying degrees of bad (from a privacy/security/freedom perspective), by which I mean they're all flawed in their own ways. Signal requires Google Play Services on Android. That means it's put simply not a privacy messenger. Yes there's crypto, but it's also tied into Whisper Systems' infrastructure, there's no federation. I use Signal reluctantly, and only on IOS. Threema,…

What about WhatsApp, Telegram? I don't use them, but saying that there are no options today for secure, encrypted communication raises my eyebrow.

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

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think as long as they are GPL, you can use the infrastructure. https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Android/issues/282

You can, but moxie will throw a temper tantrum about it. https://github.com/LibreSignal/LibreSignal/issues/37#issueco...

You call that a temper tantrum? I thought he was being very reasonable.

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

#40
post #6

Why isn't anyone talking about Wire? https://wire.com/ The little I've used it, I found it pleasant and effective. But it almost seems like there is a campaign to ignore Wire; nearly every article written about Signal and alternatives fails to even mention Wire.

The NYT article even mentions Signal weaknesses (e.g. multi-device support) that are addressed in Wire, without mentioning Wire. Poor journalism.
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