Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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I got a new job. whatsapp group (20 people) is migrating to signal because I don't use it. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

173 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I understand that it may be problematic sometimes but this was very smooth. I didn't even say anything.

A: what's your number for the whatsapp group Me: I don't have whatsapp because of facebook. B: ok, we have to use signal then A: ok

And that was it. Life can be very easy sometimes

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

XMPP isn't any better in terms of metadata. OMEMO is an afterthought that slaps on to XMPP. Many metadata are still attached to the message. The threat model only protects the content and doesn't guard aginst metadata and traffic analysis. Even OMEMO extension is still in experimental status. Not to mention, users still need to signup an account using their email.

Honestly, I think SimpleX is better in everyway. No account required, minimal metadata (at least from the technical whitepaper and other sources I read), fully open source (AGPLv3), an ok mobile and desktop client, and audited. The register friction is almost non existance. You just need to install, set a name, and off you go. The only worry I have with them is they took VC funds.

ADD: XMPP is still better for company internal communication, especially when compliances require conversation archiving.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I think SimpleX is better in everyway.

A few SimpleX shortcomings beyond what you noted, in no particular order:

No multi-device support.
Adding contacts requires sharing somewhat large links (as either text or QR code) which can be inconvenient.
Messages are lost if not retrieved soon after they're sent. (I think it's 21 days by default. I've had vacations longer than that.)
No group calls.
Group messaging is full-mesh, meaning that as a group grows, the network traffic will balloon faster than it would with any other topology. This is generally bad for high-traffic groups, but it might be okay if they stay small or everyone always has great unmetered connectivity.
The claim to not have user IDs is misleading at best, and outright false in group chats.
The desktop app uses Java, which will be unappealing to more than a few people. (To be fair, several other messengers use Electron, which is also unappealing to more than a few.)

It does have some neat design ideas. I don't consider it ready for general use, but I look forward to seeing how it develops.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

agree with your general sentiment. I've actually been using it and its very rough around the edges, in addition to being "slow" feeling overall, and I'm just testing it out between one other person and myself on other devices. it's not something I can recommend to anyone yet, but definitely keeping my eye on it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

XMPP is way more open and interoperable than all the solutions available, it works like email any user can can talk to any other and doesn’t depend on a some proprietary / closed service centrally owned by anyone. That’s a good selling point.

XMPP doesn’t really force users to sign up with email address, it just happens that XMPP addresses use the same format, many public servers will give you an address like [email protected] that is never mapped to a real email address and only works for XMPP. The decision to actually ask people for their real addresses is up to who owns the server and won’t be directly exposed on the XMPP network.