i’ve just seen a comment in a post, in this very community, saying people trust signal because of missinformation (from what i could undertand).
if this is true, then i have a few questions:
-what menssaging app should i use for secure communications? i need an app that balances simplicity and security.
-how to explain it to my friends who use signal because i recomended?
-what this means for other apps in general?
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Requires a phone number
Signal does have your phone number, which is a problem.
On the other hand, the only information linked to that phone number is, “the person with this phone number uses signal”. AFAIK your phone number is not linked to your contacts, your message content, etc.
So in practice, the fact that Signal has your phone number is probably only a problem insofar as you don’t want anybody to know that you use Signal.
But to be fair, why have that issue if you don’t have to. Signal is actually good, still, but there are even better alternatives.
Well, it’s 100% linked to your contacts in one way or another because when you install it Signal will happily alert you to which ones of your contacts are already using Signal. I can’t see how they could manage that without slurping up your contact information.
Using phone numbers is the only real criticism imo any service that uses phone numbers is fundamentally compromised.
SimpleX Chat is an actual privacy focused app that’s easy to use and doesn’t harvest your phone number like Signal does https://simplex.chat/
Signal is the best “easy” alternative. And DIY leaves many holes for rookie errors.
Do explain what makes it better than SimpleX Chat?
Would love to use SimpleX too, but the plan fell apart while trying to use it with family. Surprisingly many people fail to grasp the concept of anything other than a phone number, social media profile, or email address. It fell apart among my more tech-savvy friends because we missed calls and had delayed notifications despite SimpleX eating through the battery like no other messaging app.
No doubt, SimpleX is the concept of a messaging app done right and could be better than any other. It’s just the implementation that needs work. But I’d be happy to hear if there’s any optimizations I could try and revisit it.
It’s fine as long as you don’t do something silly like invite a journalist to your top secret government group chat.
Or use a third party client that doesn’t have as much scrutiny on the source code and will Leak your message s
man imagine trusting in an israeli signal fork lmao
There is no problem
Given what you’ve said, Signal is still what you want and is good for it.
There are two main issues people have with Signal:
First is that it requires a phone number to sign up. That makes some people who want it to be truly anonymous unhappy. It’s not meant to be anonymous, though. It’s meant to be private. Those aren’t the same thing.
Second is that it runs on AWS. This isn’t a problem in the sense that it’s possible for it to still retain privacy while running on AWS. Some people don’t like it because they view the dependence on the infrastructure of an American company to be a risk to availability. They also believe that it would exacerbate a security flaw if one were found.
Personally, I know these risks and still find it to be the best balance between privacy, security, and ease of use.
This is long, but answers your questions: Why Not Signal?
-how to explain it to my friends who use signal because i recomended?
Okay it doesn’t answer that one. But also, whether they should use Signal or not depends on their threat models. Many people don’t see the US police state as a threat.
Best answer/link and cause…
I’m put off by the centralized server. I’d want to self host without having to build a special client, something like nextcloud. That the company chose to prevent that gives me a bad impression. So I haven’t been using it so far.
I’ve played with GNU Jami a little but it was flaky when I tried it last year. Maybe it’s better now.
The problem is it isn’t Telegram, Whatsapp, or some other insecure platform that nefarious actors would rather privacy minded individuals use.
No, privacy minded individuals do not use a platform designed to harvest phone numbers lmfao.
I got around it by registering a new number with phreeli.
granted, this is not something most people can go and do, phone numbers are hard to separate from. however, you might agree that privacy minded individuals are more likely to find that workaround acceptable.
I do like Dessalines post regarding alternatives, I’ll have to do more research.
why are you making a post instead of replying to a comment?
So i can open a discussion on this question (specificaly)
The problem is that you didn’t bring much, and it sounds like you’re trying to spread FUD yourself:
- didn’t quote the original comment
- didn’t elaborate on misinformation and how it could be a problem to signal
- the questions immediately assumed it (whatever it is) is true
Sorry if that’s the case, i’m just shocked to hear this, and i want help to clarify this question.
