Signal’s mission and sole focus is private communication. For years, Signal has kept your messages private, your profile information (like your name and profile photo) private, your contacts private, and your groups private – among much else. Now we’re taking that one step further, by making your...
Finally, we can have usernames in Signal instead of giving our phone number to everybody.
Matrix/Element is slower than shit. I don't understand why anyone recommends this.
Session is also slow but that's not even a problem because I don't know anyone who's even heard of it, much less used it, and that's mostly because it doesn't have phone numbers.
At least some people I know are on Signal and I can easily discover them by phone #. Or at least I used to.
Been using matrix as my primary communication method (including bridges to other networks for things like Slack and WhatsApp) for over 3 years now, doesn't feel slow?
Is Session actually secure though? I know they're based in Australia, and as an Aussie myself, holy fuck would I not trust this country for even a fraction of a picosecond with anything private or sensitive. We have some of the world's most draconian and far-reaching digital privacy and surveillance laws, and I'm not ready to accept that Session hasn't been secretly compromised by the AFP, given the law against revealing government backdoors.
Happy to be proven wrong, but I always err on the side of extreme caution when it comes to Australia. Digitally, we're closer to the CCP than any of our fellow western nations.
Thanks for the warning -- that was my first question. It is my top reason (among many other reasons) for avoiding Signal.
Checkout Matrix/Element or Session,
All 3 of the sites you linked are Cloudflare sites (thus antithetical to privacy). Yes, I know you can use some of that tech without touching CF, but when they run CF websites it reveals hypocrisy & not understanding the goals of their audience.
If that's a concern you could also always use Threema, which has been built from the ground up to use anonymous random IDs and optionally lets you link a phone number or e-mail address to that ID. The company has also won important court cases against having to store metadata preemptively and responding to blanket requests by law enforcement.
I never heard about Threema before,
quickly glanced at it's Github repo,
but I think I prefer Matrix/Element over it.
Threema seems to largely rely om GMS (Google Messaging Service),
meaning that most messages will go through Google's servers,
albeit end-to-end encrypted for now,
I would not be suprised if Google would participate in "Harvest now, Decrypt later".
I would love to use Signal more, but I have it for only 1 friend. No one else I know uses it. And the fact that they don't support SMS is I imagine a large contributing factor.
(Yes, I know SMS is inherently insecure & unprivate, but having that support is a good way to get users' foots in the door, and also what good is a totally secure platform if no one uses it?)
In my region everyone uses Facebook Messenger. And if you don't use it, to contant people that won't install an app for you (like meeting you for first time), the only option is SMS.
I still luckily have a nice group of friends using Signal but I agree that dropping SMS support was a mistake. There was a good issue explaining why dropping SMS support was bad on their GitHub: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Android/issues/12560
In hindsight it's sad how very right he was. Now when I think "I want to send Alice a message", I just go to the app I know will work, instead of trying to remember if Alice still uses Signal too.
It's never too late. "Back then", when I started using Signal (called TextSecure), only one other single friend used it. Nowadays, almost all my personal contacts use it. Every additional Signal user adds a contact in someone other's address book as a potential Signal contact. It just takes time. Good luck!
There's anonymity and privacy. This keeps you private from other users, and they already keep you private from themselves other than the initial sign up. What this service isn't, and never has been, is anonymous. They don't want that and there are big usability issues with an extended anonymous user base. Decide for yourself what you need
Specifically, anonymity is confidentiality of identity. Confidentiality is part of privacy, which is a broad concept. So when a tool or mechanism works against anonymity, it works against privacy. It may not work against a privacy aspect that you care about, but it’s privacy nonetheless.
This is a big complaint for me. I know that there is the official standalone APK, but if I am running a de-Googled phone, I want to be able to use Signal and have it update on a regular basis.