Bridgefy, the messenger promoted for mass protests, is a privacy disaster
1–10 of 49 posts
Re: Bridgefy, the messenger promoted for mass protests, is a privacy disaster
#2A lot of privacy apps made to spy on people :-(
Re: Bridgefy, the messenger promoted for mass protests, is a privacy disaster
#3A lot of privacy apps made to spy on people :-(
I guess honeypots should be expected.
Re: Bridgefy, the messenger promoted for mass protests, is a privacy disaster
#4I have noticed that since the protests began there has been a huge influx of my contacts onto Signal and I've gotten a few questions about how to use PGP. I'm glad folks are starting to take privacy in their messengers more seriously, but a lot of the privacy-focused messengers are pretty bad (with Bridgefy being a particularly egregious case). Unfortunately there seems to be a trade off continuum between user friendliness and privacy in all currently available offerings and for most people I think Signal hits the sweet spot. I'd be interested to hear what other tools people would recommend here, as I haven't used all of them (eg Telegram/Matrix).
Re: Bridgefy, the messenger promoted for mass protests, is a privacy disaster
#5A lot of privacy apps made to spy on people :-(
Sadly this is the case more often than not these days.
Re: Bridgefy, the messenger promoted for mass protests, is a privacy disaster
#6The proposed change to use the signal protocol wouldn't seem to address all the metadata issues with their core tech. Their statement mentioned nothing more than "oops we're a startup", the signal change, and an intention to continue to invest in the "mesh".
It does seem like a nice feature for existing platforms to be able to enable in disasters and at events.
As for protests, maybe some communication is better than none if the government is shutting things down?
Re: Bridgefy, the messenger promoted for mass protests, is a privacy disaster
#7I have noticed that since the protests began there has been a huge influx of my contacts onto Signal and I've gotten a few questions about how to use PGP. I'm glad folks are starting to take privacy in their messengers more seriously, but a lot of the privacy-focused messengers are pretty bad (with Bridgefy being a particularly egregious case). Unfortunately there seems to be a trade off continuum between user friend…
My money is on p2p matrix. It doesn't solve the immediate case Bridgefy does yet (I think it expects to have an internet connection), but it does solve the 'we have to trust central services like signal and or have incredibly difficult ux' scenario somewhat. Metadata resistant to a point etc.
Cwtch.im (pronounced couch) is an app I'm looking closely at but doesn't seem to have much movement in terms of shipping new releases or getting it going in apks or Fdroid. But I keep any eye there too.
Re: Bridgefy, the messenger promoted for mass protests, is a privacy disaster
#8From the article these attacks allow for:
* deanonymizing users
* building social graphs of users’ interactions, both in real time and after the fact
* decrypting and reading direct messages
* impersonating users to anyone else on the network
* completely shutting down the network
* performing active man-in-the-middle attacks, which allow an adversary not only to read messages, but to tamper with them as well
This app basically allows for the exact opposite of what people are expecting from the app. Doesn't that qualify as some sort of fraud or false advertising? If not, I wonder if we need further regulation to protect the public from developers that are either incompetent or straight malicious.
Re: Bridgefy, the messenger promoted for mass protests, is a privacy disaster
#9I have noticed that since the protests began there has been a huge influx of my contacts onto Signal and I've gotten a few questions about how to use PGP. I'm glad folks are starting to take privacy in their messengers more seriously, but a lot of the privacy-focused messengers are pretty bad (with Bridgefy being a particularly egregious case). Unfortunately there seems to be a trade off continuum between user friend…
We're working on a PGP app called Safe Easy Privacy on iOS. Our idea is that if PGP was easier to use more would use it for private communications, we're still in the early stages and we know that PGP isn't the perfect solution, but it's better than nothing. We've noticed people saying they're using Safe to share keys with people who aren't tech savvy.
Re: Bridgefy, the messenger promoted for mass protests, is a privacy disaster
#10Learn to use radios (in mass balls-to-the-walls protests).