4 ms·

What alternatives are there to signal? Reasonable, for a lay person.

by j-bos 4y ago

amarant 4y ago
Telegram I think is considered safe? But TBF signal is end to end encrypted which means at least the content if your chats are safe. This is in my opinion safe enough, but YMMV I guess
- piaste 4y ago
  Telegram is, I believe, generally worse than Signal for privacy. Both have FOSS clients and offer E2E chats (good), although Telegram doesn't make them the default. Both require the use of phone numbers for identification and store some of your metadata in their central servers (bad). Both dabbled with the idea of privacy-preserving monetization via cryptocurrencies, and both failed spectacularly (funny). Telegram is run by a swashbuckling Russian expat in Dubai; Signal is run by an American security nerd. You might prefer your metadata to be in Pavel Durov's hands than Moxie Marlinspike's, depending on your threat model, but probably not.
  - amarant 4y ago
    I stand corrected! I might have actually confused the background of the two apps with eachother...
  - tptacek 4y ago
    Telegram doesn't do E2E group chats at all.
BlackLotus89 4y ago
Depends on your use case. Signal has the largest user base. * Matrix (you don't have to selfhost) is ok. Consider not using matrix.org (it's "decentralized" for a reason) * Quicksy is nice but has no userbase at all. * Threema, but look at https://breakingthe3ma.app/ https://breakingthe3ma.app/ first and https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/news-alleged-weaknesses-statement https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/news-alleged-weaknesses-sta... and https://soatok.blog/2021/11/05/threema-three-strikes-youre-out/ https://soatok.blog/2021/11/05/threema-three-strikes-youre-o... * Wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_(software) * Telegram is the worst of the bunch (imho). Just don't use it...
- tptacek 4y ago
  Last I checked, and it's been awhile, Wire is not only centralized, but also keeps contact lists online --- in other words, they've kept an SQL database of who's talking to whom across their whole service, serverside. If that's changed (or if someone wants to point out that I'm wrong about that, which is always possible), I'd appreciate the update.
  - BlackLotus89 4y ago
    AFAIK that's still the case. Who messages who is saved with matrix as well though. This shouldn't be a comprehensive list of what's better than signal only a list of everything available in the space. Imho everything in the list is better than telegram and whatsapp, but depending on your use case nothing is good enough and you must fall back to briar or something similar.
autoexec 4y ago
If you don't mind the lack of polish I've been using Jami for secure communication and even file sharing and I've gotten a couple lay people set up and running without much trouble. Set up is pretty easy. They don't even need you to give them an email address, but it's different. It's not going to look or act like Signal. What I loved about Signal on mobile was how it handled both encrypted messaging and plain old SMS/MMS in the same app and I don't have a real alternative for that.

What alternatives are there to signal? Reasonable, for a lay person.

by j-bos 4y ago

What alternatives are there to signal? Reasonable, for a lay person.

Telegram I think is considered safe? But TBF signal is end to end encrypted which means at least the content if your chats are safe. This is in my opinion safe enough, but YMMV I guess

piaste 4y ago
Telegram is, I believe, generally worse than Signal for privacy. Both have FOSS clients and offer E2E chats (good), although Telegram doesn't make them the default. Both require the use of phone numbers for identification and store some of your metadata in their central servers (bad). Both dabbled with the idea of privacy-preserving monetization via cryptocurrencies, and both failed spectacularly (funny). Telegram is run by a swashbuckling Russian expat in Dubai; Signal is run by an American security nerd. You might prefer your metadata to be in Pavel Durov's hands than Moxie Marlinspike's, depending on your threat model, but probably not.
- amarant 4y ago
  I stand corrected! I might have actually confused the background of the two apps with eachother...
- tptacek 4y ago
  Telegram doesn't do E2E group chats at all.

BlackLotus89 4y ago

Depends on your use case. Signal has the largest user base. * Matrix (you don't have to selfhost) is ok. Consider not using matrix.org (it's "decentralized" for a reason) * Quicksy is nice but has no userbase at all. * Threema, but look at https://breakingthe3ma.app/ https://breakingthe3ma.app/ first and https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/news-alleged-weaknesses-statement https://threema.ch/en/blog/posts/news-alleged-weaknesses-sta... and https://soatok.blog/2021/11/05/threema-three-strikes-youre-out/ https://soatok.blog/2021/11/05/threema-three-strikes-youre-o... * Wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_(software) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wire_(software) * Telegram is the worst of the bunch (imho). Just don't use it...

tptacek 4y ago
Last I checked, and it's been awhile, Wire is not only centralized, but also keeps contact lists online --- in other words, they've kept an SQL database of who's talking to whom across their whole service, serverside. If that's changed (or if someone wants to point out that I'm wrong about that, which is always possible), I'd appreciate the update.
- BlackLotus89 4y ago
  AFAIK that's still the case. Who messages who is saved with matrix as well though. This shouldn't be a comprehensive list of what's better than signal only a list of everything available in the space. Imho everything in the list is better than telegram and whatsapp, but depending on your use case nothing is good enough and you must fall back to briar or something similar.

autoexec 4y ago

If you don't mind the lack of polish I've been using Jami for secure communication and even file sharing and I've gotten a couple lay people set up and running without much trouble. Set up is pretty easy. They don't even need you to give them an email address, but it's different. It's not going to look or act like Signal. What I loved about Signal on mobile was how it handled both encrypted messaging and plain old SMS/MMS in the same app and I don't have a real alternative for that.