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The design doc is here. https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet/blob/master/doc/design.md https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet/blob/master/doc/desi... It de

The design doc is here. https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet/blob/master/doc/design.md https://github.com/ricochet-im/ricochet/blob/master/doc/desi... It describes one of its goals as, "Resist blacklisting or denial of service against users." Preventing both blacklisting and DoS seems contradictory to me in an anonymous messaging protocol. If an anonymous party wants to spam me to make the product effectively unusable, I either need to be able to blacklist them, or to whitelist known contacts, in which case none of them are anonymous.

jstanley 8y ago
It means there's no third party (including Ricochet devs!) that can blacklist users. You can easily delete contacts you don't want to receive messages from -- and in fact the UI is lacking in this regard: if you delete someone and subsequently change your mind, the only way to fix this is to edit the config file manually and remove them from the list of blocked contacts. Source: am a very happy Ricochet user.
- dfabulich 8y ago
  But the anonymous user can create N anonymous accounts and spam you N times with N accounts, right? That's where spam forces us to choose between blacklisting people and whitelisting (which breaks anonymity).
  - jstanley 8y ago
    Sure, then you'd get N contact requests which you'd have to ignore (which has the same effect as deleting a contact which you'd previously accepted). But people can spam your email account as well. When this became a problem, spam filters were developed. There's no reason the same thing couldn't happen in Ricochet if spam became a problem. Ricochet's problem isn't that too many spammers are using it. It's that almost nobody at all is using it.
    - dfabulich 8y ago
      Email spam filters didn't/don't actually work that well without de-anonymizing features like SPF and DKIM. I'm not saying that spam is a problem today, but that the design goals of Richochet don't allow it to deal with the spam problem for users who actually want anonymous messaging.
      - jstanley 8y ago
        What anonymous messaging system would you recommend?
  - DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
    I'd never accept a request from a random user. My workflow would be like this: agree to discuss on signal or via pgp, which you use to get the ricochet-ID from the person that intends to connect with you. Once they tell you their id via this out of band channel, it's easy to reject any other requests that you don't expect. My ricochet-id is public knowledge now. But say you're a journalist who wants to protect their source (on your end) e.g. a total stranger who is going to tell you some secrets then no need to even have a contact list. No need for a history. You just use the ricochet-id once. Maybe in a short-lived VM, Qubes or Tails whatever ... And tear down the whole system anyway once I'm done with the chat. So in the first case you can simply avoid spam with boostrapping a safe rendezvous point, the second case would never see any spam.
    - jstanley 8y ago
      I deliberately publish my Ricochet ID (ricochet:it2j3z6t6ksumpzd) and accept most requests from random people. It's led to mostly people who add me as a contact then close Ricochet before I reply and never open it again, a large handful of fun conversations with interesting people, and a couple of weird conversations with crazy people :).
      - samatman 8y ago
        Sadly not scalable, but one of the great pleasures of using early or obscure communications media. The entire early Internet worked this way and it was lovely.
    - dfabulich 8y ago
      If you'd never accept a request from a random user, then you're not doing anonymous messaging. If you're a journalist who wants to receive a message from a total stranger, then you'd have to accept a contact request from a that stranger. Spammers can then deny the journalist access to anonymous requests by spamming them with anonymous requests. The journalist could try to keep their contact ID a secret, but then anonymous sources would have no idea how to contact the journalist.
      - 8y ago
- ajconway 8y ago
  A possibility to blacklist users is essential for a messaging service to be able to respond to abuse requests. I wonder how Ricochet plans to handle it.
  - jstanley 8y ago
    Ricochet isn't a "service". It's a peer-to-peer protocol. There is nobody to send abuse complaints to, by design, and therefore no requirement to be able to respond to them.
    - ajconway 8y ago
      Right, it’s a protocol with a reference implementation. It would just be nice to have a service with the kind of privacy properties this software provides on a mobile device where software distribution is very centralized and requires a tiny bit of censorship compliance.

jstanley 8y ago

It means there's no third party (including Ricochet devs!) that can blacklist users. You can easily delete contacts you don't want to receive messages from -- and in fact the UI is lacking in this regard: if you delete someone and subsequently change your mind, the only way to fix this is to edit the config file manually and remove them from the list of blocked contacts. Source: am a very happy Ricochet user.

dfabulich 8y ago
But the anonymous user can create N anonymous accounts and spam you N times with N accounts, right? That's where spam forces us to choose between blacklisting people and whitelisting (which breaks anonymity).
- jstanley 8y ago
  Sure, then you'd get N contact requests which you'd have to ignore (which has the same effect as deleting a contact which you'd previously accepted). But people can spam your email account as well. When this became a problem, spam filters were developed. There's no reason the same thing couldn't happen in Ricochet if spam became a problem. Ricochet's problem isn't that too many spammers are using it. It's that almost nobody at all is using it.
  - dfabulich 8y ago
    Email spam filters didn't/don't actually work that well without de-anonymizing features like SPF and DKIM. I'm not saying that spam is a problem today, but that the design goals of Richochet don't allow it to deal with the spam problem for users who actually want anonymous messaging.
    - jstanley 8y ago
      What anonymous messaging system would you recommend?
- DyslexicAtheist 8y ago
  I'd never accept a request from a random user. My workflow would be like this: agree to discuss on signal or via pgp, which you use to get the ricochet-ID from the person that intends to connect with you. Once they tell you their id via this out of band channel, it's easy to reject any other requests that you don't expect. My ricochet-id is public knowledge now. But say you're a journalist who wants to protect their source (on your end) e.g. a total stranger who is going to tell you some secrets then no need to even have a contact list. No need for a history. You just use the ricochet-id once. Maybe in a short-lived VM, Qubes or Tails whatever ... And tear down the whole system anyway once I'm done with the chat. So in the first case you can simply avoid spam with boostrapping a safe rendezvous point, the second case would never see any spam.
  - jstanley 8y ago
    I deliberately publish my Ricochet ID (ricochet:it2j3z6t6ksumpzd) and accept most requests from random people. It's led to mostly people who add me as a contact then close Ricochet before I reply and never open it again, a large handful of fun conversations with interesting people, and a couple of weird conversations with crazy people :).
    - samatman 8y ago
      Sadly not scalable, but one of the great pleasures of using early or obscure communications media. The entire early Internet worked this way and it was lovely.
  - dfabulich 8y ago
    If you'd never accept a request from a random user, then you're not doing anonymous messaging. If you're a journalist who wants to receive a message from a total stranger, then you'd have to accept a contact request from a that stranger. Spammers can then deny the journalist access to anonymous requests by spamming them with anonymous requests. The journalist could try to keep their contact ID a secret, but then anonymous sources would have no idea how to contact the journalist.
    - 8y ago
ajconway 8y ago
A possibility to blacklist users is essential for a messaging service to be able to respond to abuse requests. I wonder how Ricochet plans to handle it.
- jstanley 8y ago
  Ricochet isn't a "service". It's a peer-to-peer protocol. There is nobody to send abuse complaints to, by design, and therefore no requirement to be able to respond to them.
  - ajconway 8y ago
    Right, it’s a protocol with a reference implementation. It would just be nice to have a service with the kind of privacy properties this software provides on a mobile device where software distribution is very centralized and requires a tiny bit of censorship compliance.