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WhatsApp goes down for users globally

theguardian.com

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Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#71

Post by ale42 »

noio wrote: post #30
iamreallytired wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good thing. Forcing people to give their phone number to use an instant messaging app/protocol is a sign the company just wants your private data. Also, by doing that and letting the account existence be publicly known, anyone with their phone number will know that they have an account on that service and lets you try to contact them. That can range from privacy violation to life-in-danger situations.

I find phone numbers awesome because you actually "own" them to some degree. (i.e. you can take your number to a new provider). Moving to a different messenger app with the same phone number means I can at least still find some of my network there. Only email on your own domain would have that feature. I don't really care if they sell my phone number, it's already out there, I don't consider it private data anymore.

Quite true. It would be better, though, to be able to use an instant messaging system using a simple identifier lie an e-mail address, as an alternative to a phone number. Simply because there are quite some people out there who mainly want to message on a computer, and want to keep only some kind of messages on their phones.

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#72

Post by d0mine »

mritzmann wrote: post #32
sofixa wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not Telegram, it has by far the best UX of all chat apps.

Telegram (per default) does not have end-to-end encryption.

"Telegram is more secure than mass market messengers like WhatsApp and Line." https://telegram.org/faq#q-how-secure-is-telegram

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#73

Post by sneak »

chagaif wrote: post #26

Time to talk about matrix.org and Element not Signal and definitely not Telegram...

Matrix/Element iOS builds send all notifications (by Apple's design) through centralized developer-run servers that wake up your client app to talk to your homeserver.

There's no way for you to avoid SPOFs for notifications on Apple devices, because APNS is designed so that the only way you can wake up an app to talk to an API is via notifications sent from the developer of that app.

This means that if the APNS servers go down (unlikely), or that the vector.im notification relay servers go down, nobody using Element on iOS gets any notifications.

It also means that vector.im sees all of the notification events (who got notified when), though I don't believe they see the notification content. The notifications (I speculate) are simply app wakeup events that make the app then contact the homeserver to see what it has new.

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#74

Post by tjixxu »

chagaif wrote: post #26

Time to talk about matrix.org and Element not Signal and definitely not Telegram...

The Matrix team seems to be focusing on anything but making it as performant and usable as Telegram or Slack. The project leaders have been told this multiple times but there is always a reason.

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#75

Post by jpeter »

esperent wrote: post #66
sgt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world can go a few hours without WhatsApp. If it's that important, just pick up the phone.

I don't know the phone numbers of anyone except my mother and my bank.

You can save them on your phone you know that?

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#76

Post by sneak »

dustedcodes wrote: post #44

Even though I do have WhatsApp I wouldn't have noticed without this HN headline. Everyone I message with is via iMessage or Signal nowadays and I only have WhatsApp because I am part of a few sports clubs which have a WhatsApp group but we don't chat enough for me to notice a downtime like today. Makes me happy to see how I've actually managed to rid myself of WhatsApp for the most part.

WhatsApp is end to end encrypted and AFAIK now has encrypted backups.

iMessage intentionally preserves a backdoor in its crypto so that the FBI can read approximately every iMessage sent/received without a warrant, should they so desire.

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#77

Post by sneak »

sgt wrote: post #60
skc wrote: post #12

Yep, actually enjoying the lack of notifications right now. Though for my closest friends and family we still have Signal as backup.

Take my advice - switch off notifications. You'll still see the badge on the app itself e.g. with a red dot, at least that's how it is on iOS. So when you see that you'll know to open it. Before that, there's no reason to be bothered while you're doing something else.

You mean switch off banners - if you switch off notifications entirely, the badge will not update as the app will not wake up in the background to fetch new messages when they come in.

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#78

Post by KoftaBob »

sneak wrote: post #70
ale42 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it can suffer the same problem WhatsApp had, because it's centralized. If something on their infrastructure goes down, it might have consequences for all users. This is not the case for distributes solutions like Matrix. (I actually use Signal, though, and not Matrix, because the latter, although it has many advantages, has a relatively bad UX compared to Signal, or at least used to, and it's hard to get cont…

Centralized management does not mean centralized infrastructure. Any of these systems could distribute the APIs and message delivery infra across multiple independent jurisdictions, regions, and providers, and do clientside load balancing. The fact that these systems are centralized in management does not mean that they need to have any SPOFs. Also, the Apple App Store and iOS activation servers are the biggest SPOFs…

> Centralized management does not mean centralized infrastructure. Any of these systems could distribute the APIs and message delivery infra across multiple independent jurisdictions, regions, and providers, and do clientside load balancing.

While true, Signal hasn't done this as far as I know. Until they do, their infrastructure is just as centralized as WhatsApps.

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#79

Post by sneak »

KoftaBob wrote: post #5

Seems like a good time to plug Session: https://getsession.org/ Open source, doesn't require a phone number, and a big strength is that it's decentralized, which makes it much less vulnerable to outages like this. "Session utilises the decentralised Oxen Service Node Network to store and route messages. This means that unlike P2P messaging applications you can message Session users when they are offline. This network…

Nothing on iOS is decentralized, all push notifications must be proxied via Apple's APNS servers from the app developer. There's no support in iOS for p2p messaging apps, even Matrix/Element proxy the notifications via centralized developer-run servers (which are then routed via centralized (but non-SPOF) Apple APNS servers).

Re: WhatsApp goes down for users globally

#80

Post by wakeupcall »

Vinnl wrote: post #43
chagaif wrote: post #26

Time to talk about matrix.org and Element not Signal and definitely not Telegram...

I mean, that's great and all, but it would still be pretty annoying if large parts of your network go down, and especially if matrix.org would go down.

But nobody is forcing you to use matrix.org, and if you have the resources it's easy to run a separate instance with peering, so that you get both the benefits of being able to communicate with everyone and have a faster/locally controlled instance with whatever rules you like.

We're keeping one alive with friends, not because we need it, but because we can and it's easy to do so.

We can argue matrix has not the most fancyful clients right now, and it might not be a perfect solution for everybody, however there are many clients to choose from, you can write one easily with many support libraries, it's easy to script, you can have full control.

This is what we should push for. I've recommended signal to a lot of friends, and I currently feel stupid for doing so: It was a hurdle to convince them, and what I achieved was to move some to another privately run network with arbitrary rules and mandated software controlled by a single entity which is now starting to do random crap.

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