this post was submitted on 14 May 2024
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Privacy

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 6 months ago (4 children)

Yes there is FUD around signal. But they are not offering any better solutions.

Signal has some structural issues, and isn't a good solution for all threat models (i.e. if your a government who doesn't fully trust the USA, then signal isn't for you)

Any conversation that doesn't talk about briar, simplex, etc is deeply flawed since only they attempt to address the fundamental structural issues with signal.

Don't use that centralized chat service, use THIS centralized chat service - is just FUD... and isn't a helpful conversation.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Don't use a centralized chat service. Use a decentralized chat service. XMPP uses the same encryption for it's e2e encryption, is decentralized, and super light weight for both the server and the client.

[–] onlinepersona 37 points 6 months ago (2 children)

And "super easy" to use. To get your friend onto it, first you have to host a server, then they have to install a client with an interface from the 90s, activate the XEPs for encryption on their client and ensure the server supports it too, exchange usernames, create an encrypted connection and exchange random codes over another medium to ensure you're talking to the right person.

NOW you can start chatting with the other person and hope the server doesn't crash. ECPC

Anti Commercial-AI license

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

XMPP is nice, but OMEMO is brittle.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Haven't ran into issues with it yet, and this is my preferred PM method. When does it break?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

One account, multiple devices logging into it (in my use case, personal laptop, work laptop, two phones).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

Or, you can skip the unhinged rant, use monocles or dino, and a public server.

Also, hosting a server is much simpler than something like matrix. You can host an xmpp server on a pi and that is more than enough. Or, just use a public server.

So difficult.

I like how you included steps that absolutely aren't required and haven't been for like a decade to make your statement more hyperbolic.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

if your a government who doesn’t fully trust the USA, then signal isn’t for you

how? i tought it was e2ee and open source?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

The security of your key is determined by the strength of your passphrase. Am I missing something?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

https://hackertalks.com/comment/3441244

Uploading your private key to the cloud is a very risky thing to do regardless of your threat model. And there are many threat models that absolutely cannot do that. So it is worth indicating as one of the weaknesses of signal

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

the best answer

[–] [email protected] -1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Any conversation that doesn't talk about briar, simplex, etc is deeply flawed

I can take you seriously amidst this comment section. Thought all comments were crap😂

[–] [email protected] 51 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Telegram isnt really e2ee so he wants to champion the less secure option. Gee, I wonder why?????

[–] [email protected] 24 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Its Russian founder recently praised Musk in an interview for Tucker Carlson.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Is narcissistic disorder a prereq to be a billionaire or is it just a common symptom of having too much wealth for some.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Yeah sort of. I think those types of disorders get rewarded in many cases. It's exceptionally profitable to exploit labor, mislead the public, and plunder the planet. When you have a conscience and empathy, that's a lot harder to do, especially if you already enjoy a certain level of financial security.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 6 months ago (1 children)

telegram is the real FUD here. its closed, not encrypted by default and all messages go through a centralized server.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 6 months ago

I don't think it has anything to do with the "right wingers." I think many people and governments seek to discredit anything they can not control. Its basic misinformation tactics.

As far as Elon goes, he says crazy things and shouldn't be believed.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

They do this periodically. We saw it during Occupy, the Arab Spring, BLM, now Palestine (again). As a general rule, when folks go into the streets, the tighty righties start up the FUD.

There is a reason why spooks learn tradecraft - threat modeling, procedures, awareness, and techniques - more than they learn technology. It would behoove folks to to learn a little about that before hitting up the appstore.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

Talks about other people creating FUD, then links to a post asserting telegram is compromised without citing any sources about anything discussed in the post. 🙄 FUD indeed.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm not saying it's broken, but it has some design choices and functions that makes even Whatsapp a better choice for privacy minded people. Like rolling their own crypto and not having e2ee as default.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Anti-libre software, WhatsApp, bans us from proving it has E2EE, bans us from proving any of its claims and bans us from removing malicious source code.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Telegram is Service as a Software Substitute (proof app needs service and we are missing server software for it: broken app).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

When do they not spread FUD?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

It think there are a lot of factors at play. Musk wants Twitter* to be an everything app and has mentioned plans to add e2e encryption to the dms. Telegram already had an iffy relationship to people who look for encrypted platforms so he probably wants to set up that idea to get people onto Twitter instead, especially as the right's relationship to the platform is absolutely getting worse.

A big chunk of far right Telegram has moved off the platform recently after quite a few of the groups that got their start from anti-lockdown demos had members get arrested for terror charges. They seem to blame the fact that Telegram is backdoored but they constantly fed-post in open unencrypted channels anyone can read anyway. The police probably do monitor those channels but if I were to guess how they got caught, my bet is honestly that they just put in reports to the cops about each other because being fascists usually goes hand in hand with being horrible people.

I'm not sure how much he actually reads on far right Telegram but there is evidence of him at least following some channels where this sentiment can be seen. If I were to guess he saw oppotunity in bringing that audience back to Twitter.

* I refuse to call it X

EDIT: fix early accidental submission

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago

Yes, "because one of their council is leftist pro censorship"

Like this crap

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I will throw shade at this liberal article writer by saying Elon Musk also promoted Signal. Does this make Signal actively compromised? Absolutely as much as Telegram.

This way of judgement of things is pure mental illness. I refuse to sugarcoat this, because now suddenly this Telegram vs Signal shitshow will become a trend if it is not nipped in the bud.

Signal/WhatsApp are different from Telegram/Discord. Former aim to be E2EE messengers while latter aim to be realtime public forums. Comparing apples to oranges is dumb, and falling for this Durov whining and counter-whining of Signal sheeps is even worse.

Let me ask Signal stans, since they are so proud of it, why is it that they kept delaying the username feature, and still require phone number to this day? Signal is not anonymous or private. Their servers are all Amazon and Google. What is private is the message contents, and even WhatsApp has that. Most people never even install Signal from their website's APK, instead Play Store or Aurora frontend (same thing) or some APK website. So how is Signal this messiah? Matrix is a whole lot better, XMPP and SimpleX are even better. Briar is an extreme step further.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Signal isn't owned and run by Meta though is it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Is Meta ownership the singular thing that needs focus? Google, Facebook and Amazon are nearly equally evil, considering all of them are US military contractors. Other Big Tech companies are too, but Signal uses them as server hosts.

Consider the fact that a lot of probabilities that surface as criticism are valid, because Signal prioritised things like stickers, statuses and fucking MobileCoin crypto over username pseudonymity functionality, and even then you need the phone number. Do you know who did this since day one? TELEGRAM. Telegram has pseudonym username option to hide phone number from people from the very start. Signal did not have it for 9 years until recently.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

I was comparing Signal to WhatsApp, not to Telegram

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago
[–] [email protected] -5 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Idk how secure telegram is but cmon signal is shady AF . They won't let fdroid have it cause they want to sign their own keys or some shit but there is a speculation its because they can roll out custom apk to targets which governments want which is just not possible if it is hosted by someone like fdroid . Even telegram allows that and they even allow third party apps which signal won't .

SimpleX and briar is the best option if your actually worried about privacy .

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

I do see it weird but publishing on F-Droid means almost nothing. If you are scared of their pre-built apks, compile from source instead. If Telegram and Signal are bad, use SimpleX.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

It means a ton to me and a lot others and no one has to compile from source every time .