5 ms·

Alternative...Google Hangouts?

• scott_karana 13y ago
  More secure in a sense, but why should anyone need to give the keys to their instant messaging castle to Google? I'm shocked that a startup with a similar approach to WhatsApp hasn't made a reasonable rigorous application yet.
  • frank_boyd 13y ago
    > why should anyone need to give the keys to their instant messaging castle to Google? Equivalent to cc'ing the NSA.
    • pathy 13y ago
      Let's be honest, I'd rather have NSA snoop on what on my texts than a criminal. Both are bad but NSA is at least slightly better.
      • frank_boyd 13y ago
        The trick is to let nobody snoop on your texts.
        • pathy 13y ago
          Which is, as we can see in the GP, is hard ;). Whatsapp - broken encryption Google Hangout - NSA Texts - NSA (and others) Facebook Messenger - NSA iMessage - probably NSA, though I don't know. and so forth. Most commonly used text services are woefully leaky.
    • scott_karana 13y ago
      Yes, that was exactly my point :)
  • Al-Khwarizmi 13y ago
    There are already several messaging applications that are much better than WhatsApp (Line or WeChat, to name a few without including the Big G), but people keep sticking to WhatsApp due to the network effect (it's what your friends have). It's rather sad, given that with practically any other application (Line, WeChat, GTalk, Skype) you can talk via phone, tablet or PC, and with WhatsApp I have to message my friends with a tiny phone screen while my wonderful desktop keyboard and dual monitors sit there laughing at me.
• r0muald 13y ago
  TextSecure should release a new version soon that is able to use the device data channel instead of SMS.
• devx 13y ago
  Not until they implement real end to end encryption, like OTR.
• StavrosK 13y ago
  Silent Circle is a good alternative. I work for them, so I can recommend them, but I can't speak for how secure the other products are. The apps developed by Moxie Marlinspike also seem good to me, I've used RedPhone and it's pretty nice. The texting app sends SMS, though, it doesn't go through the Internet, so it might not be what you're looking for.
  • chmars 13y ago
    I agree that Silent Circle is a good alternative. There's just one worry: Silent Circle's mail service was shut in the aftermath of the Lavabit shutdown. Why shouldn't that happen to the messaging service? What's the difference?
    • StavrosK 13y ago
      The mail service was impossible to transparently make end-to-end secure (because of the nature of email), the other services already are. SC felt that, if it can't be end-to-end secure, it shouldn't be offered at all.
• chmars 13y ago
  Threema comes to my mind: https://threema.ch/en/ https://threema.ch/en/ Unfortunately, Threema is not FOSS either.
  • spurgu 13y ago
    Unfortunately, like Whatsapp, it's also only one device per account.
• vellorean 13y ago
  Why not create an account at a Jabber service (like dukgo.com) and use a free Jabber client like Xabber, Beem, Gibberbot? Separate contact lists, standards compliant, OTR support…
  • tP5n 13y ago
    jabber is, for various reasons, not a good solution for mobile platforms. to be able to receive messages a client has to be always online, not something you want ;) ...and also quite battery consuming. if jabber worked, we wouldn't be talking about whatsapp/hemlis/threema.