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I have a private Jabber server (ejabberd) on my own VPS and my friends are using it to contact me. And before this, I was using IRC, so the server got my IP ad

I have a private Jabber server (ejabberd) on my own VPS and my friends are using it to contact me. And before this, I was using IRC, so the server got my IP address and nothing more. My phone number is way more private than my IP address, which is dynamic anyway. I see lots of options that doesn't require giving up anything of importance.

Arnt 6y ago
That jabber server presents no problems for you since you're the server operator, but your friends are giving you a complete list of their contacts, and metadata about their messages too. You take your own privacy seriously and ignore that of your friends. (Relevant anecdote: I know a case where a such a server admin discovered that his SO and a friend were messaging from the same residential IP address before breakfast.) If you don't give your friends access to your server, this issue is removed, of course. But then you don't market anything and have raised a giant usability obstacle to actually using the server for communicating.
- self_awareness 6y ago
  Even if we drop all the facts about technicalities about this server (stored on an encrypted container, doesn't log, uses ssl, etc), I fail to see how a telephone number can be compared to a contact list in the privacy scale. The first one is probably top 3, where the second one could probably be maybe on 10th place (it's probably much higher if the user is doing something illegal though). You probably might argue that the privacy scale varies for different people, and of course this is true, but the telephone number is always more private than the contact list given that it's impossible -- in some countries -- to buy a SIM card that isn't tied to the citizen ID. So, Signal ties its accounts to my tax reports in a way. How's that private? But even if it can be compared in some way, then Signal requires both (phone + list), when I require just one (list), plus it's possible to set up different accounts on my server to diffuse the contact list if needed, what isn't possible on Signal. IP address requirement can't be removed, so I'm skipping it completely. Well, unless your comment wasn't about comparing Jabber to Signal, but just to point out privacy issues on my Jabber server, then OK. I understand and I agree that I don't follow every privacy standard (I don't have a privacy policy for example), but since I know exactly what's going on, I'm 100% sure that even my light take on the privacy protocols, my server is way more private than Signal ;).

Arnt 6y ago

That jabber server presents no problems for you since you're the server operator, but your friends are giving you a complete list of their contacts, and metadata about their messages too. You take your own privacy seriously and ignore that of your friends. (Relevant anecdote: I know a case where a such a server admin discovered that his SO and a friend were messaging from the same residential IP address before breakfast.) If you don't give your friends access to your server, this issue is removed, of course. But then you don't market anything and have raised a giant usability obstacle to actually using the server for communicating.

self_awareness 6y ago
Even if we drop all the facts about technicalities about this server (stored on an encrypted container, doesn't log, uses ssl, etc), I fail to see how a telephone number can be compared to a contact list in the privacy scale. The first one is probably top 3, where the second one could probably be maybe on 10th place (it's probably much higher if the user is doing something illegal though). You probably might argue that the privacy scale varies for different people, and of course this is true, but the telephone number is always more private than the contact list given that it's impossible -- in some countries -- to buy a SIM card that isn't tied to the citizen ID. So, Signal ties its accounts to my tax reports in a way. How's that private? But even if it can be compared in some way, then Signal requires both (phone + list), when I require just one (list), plus it's possible to set up different accounts on my server to diffuse the contact list if needed, what isn't possible on Signal. IP address requirement can't be removed, so I'm skipping it completely. Well, unless your comment wasn't about comparing Jabber to Signal, but just to point out privacy issues on my Jabber server, then OK. I understand and I agree that I don't follow every privacy standard (I don't have a privacy policy for example), but since I know exactly what's going on, I'm 100% sure that even my light take on the privacy protocols, my server is way more private than Signal ;).