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If one is to compare apple to apples, imho the decision to choose between Signal, Whatsapp and Telegram and other “messengers” is obvious and clear.
Signal is fully open source! You can run it on-premises, if you know your business!
Why are we not talking about it?
I hope my comment will not be discarded/removed as not being in sync with the narative… 😉
Signal is fully open source! You can run it on-premises, if you know your business!
Why are we not talking about it?
Unless something has drastically changed recently, the official Signal service won’t interoperate with anyone else’s instance. That makes its source code practically useless for general-purpose messaging, which might explain why few are talking about it.
My point is that you have all the open source software components needed to run secure communications, on your own premises, for your own users/community in case you are not trusting Signal’s infrastructure.
If you know any other similar alternative with strong encryption open source protocols please let me know! I love learning new things everyday!
Cheers!
on your own premises, for your own users/community in case you are not trusting Signal’s infrastructure.
Yes, that’s an example of data sovereignty. It’s good for self-contained groups, but is not general-purpose messaging, since it doesn’t allow communication with anyone outside your group.
If you know any other similar alternative with strong encryption open source protocols please let me know! I love learning new things everyday!
Matrix can do this. It also has support for communicating across different server instances worldwide (both public and private), and actively supports interoperability with other messaging networks, both in the short term through bridges and in the long term through the IETF’s More Instant Messaging Interoperability (MIMI) working group.
XMPP can do on-premise encrypted messaging, too. Technically, it can also support global encrypted messaging with fairly modern features, with the help of carefully selected extensions and server software and clients, although this quickly becomes impractical for general-purpose messaging, mainly because of availability and usability: Managed free servers with the right components are in short supply and often don’t last for long, and the general public doesn’t have the tech skills to do it themselves. (Availability was not a problem when Google and Facebook supported it, but that support ended years ago.) It’s still useful for relatively small groups, though, if you have a skilled admin to maintain the servers and help the users.
Thank you very much for the info!
simplex ;)
Yeah, I’m going to take this with a massive dose of salt. At least, Signal has encryption on by default for people. Where Telegram does not.
You can’t even sync encrypted chats between devices. Lose your device or have a desktop client? Bye bye encrypted chat!
Yeah, being able to seamlessly switch between the desktop app and mobile is a must for me so that’s something I already prefer in Signal.
No backup no mercy 🤷♂️
Even Facebook Messenger has E2EE on by default now. Pavel Durov talks a lot of shit considering Telegram still treats encryption as an afterthought.
Sounds like projection. Probably just got back from meeting with his Russian handlers and posted this to sooth their impotent rage.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Telegram CEO Pavel Durov issued a scathing criticism of Signal, alleging the messaging service is not secure and has ties to US intelligence agencies.
Durov made his remarks on his Telegram channel on Wednesday, pushing a variety of points against the rival messenger app, including alleging it has ongoing ties to the US government, casting doubt over its end-to-end encryption, and claiming a lack of software transparency, as well as describing Signal as "an allegedly “secure” messaging app.
The comments seem to have been inspired by a City Journal report that detailed the origins of Signal, which was kickstarted by a $3 million grant from the US government’s Open Technology Fund.
The report says that Maher was an “agent of regime change” during the Arab Spring, and communicated with dissidents in the Middle East and North Africa.
The CEO also claims that users’ Signal messages have popped up in court cases or in the media, and implies that this has happened because the app’s encryption isn’t completely secure.
It’s hard to say, but Durov may be making a reference to Sam Bankman-Fried, whose Signal messages were a key part of the trial that resulted in the ex-CEO being convicted.
The original article contains 671 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 70%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Good bot .
I’m always amazed how people come out of the woodwork to defend Signal any time any criticism of it comes up. It’s become a sacred cow that cannot be questioned. Whatever you may think of Telegram, should bear zero weight on your views of Signal.
The reality is that people developing Signal have close ties to US security agencies. It’s a centralized app hosted in US and subject to US laws. It’s been forcing people to use their phone numbers to register, and this creates a graph of real world contacts people have. This also is terrible from security perspective. It doesn’t have reproducible builds on iOS, which means you have no guarantee regarding what you’re actually running. These are just a handful of things that are publicly known.
And then we know stuff like this happens. NSA suggested using specific numbers for encryption that it knew how to factor quickly. The algorithm itself was secure, but the specific configuration of how the algorithm was implemented allowed for the exploit https://thehackernews.com/2015/10/nsa-crack-encryption.html
These kinds of backdoors are very difficult to audit for because if you don’t know what to look for then you won’t have any reason to suspect a particular configuration to be malicious. Given the relationship between people working on Signal and US government, this is a real possibility here as well.
The same kind of scrutiny people apply to Telegram and other messaging apps should absolutely be applied to Signal as well.
I’d just like to add that you can use a temporary phone number service to sign up to Signal as you only need a phone number to register, not to actually use Signal.
he’s probably projecting, yawn
The CEO also claims that users’ Signal messages have popped up in court cases or in the media, and implies that this has happened because the app’s encryption isn’t completely secure. However, Durov cites “important people I’ve spoken to” and doesn’t mention any specific instance of this happening.
[…]
The Register could not find public reports of Signal messages leaking due to faulty encryption.
Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Durov’s entire criticism seems to be based on implications and have no actual evidence of any technical problems with Signal. He’s basically just throwing shade at a competing business, which amounts to whining.
Funny how first association is “eend-to-end encryption is broken” and not, you know, that whoever used the message got hold of one of the “ends”.
Blaming the Americans is a signature “Russia has fucked with this company” trademark.
claiming it has tiesWhich lines of its libre software source code are malicious?sighs
I am going to repeat what I have said for another similar post.
I still stand for Signal App.
- Telegram has no default E2EE, Telegram is run by for profit company
- Multiple flaws were found in Telegram’s encryption algorithm
- Almost all cleartext messages are stored on telegram server, but signal stores encrypted message temporarily
- Signal is non-profit & all their source code + finances are public. Even their server codes are publically available
+1
Telegram is as safe as just using Facebook DMs (unencrypted), only it’s Russian.
I suggest you judge for yourself how safe that is.
Even if it were encrypted and the backdoor was controlled by the Russian state, logically that would make it safer than Facebook for anyone living in Western jurisdictions. The Russian government cannot get them and is hardly going to exchanging intelligence with its enemies.
To what extent is it Russian?
Even if it were encrypted
It’s not.
logically that would make it safer than Facebook for anyone living in Western jurisdictions. The Russian government cannot get them and is hardly going to exchanging intelligence
No it wouldn’t. You shouldn’t opine on what they’d do. They can negotiate, you know. And they are exchanging intelligence all the time.
with its enemies.
If that were true, corporations wouldn’t work with their competitors.
You shouldn’t opine
To “opine” is to have an opinion. Are you suggesting I should refrain from having an opinion? Does this apply to your own opinions too? Odd place to make such an argument.
Otherwise: interesting point. To me, a state that can obtain personal data by leaning on its owns corporations is, by definition, more threatening than one that has to negotiate for it with a hostile power. But perhaps I underestimate the scale of that practice.
On what they would and wouldn’t do - yes, I try not to make opinions.
But perhaps I underestimate the scale of that practice.
Considering that the balance of power between US government and, say, Meta is not much different from the same between it and Russian government (Meta doesn’t have a military, but has ways to compensate for that), that should be right.
Yes, yet telegram isn’t a piece of shit of an app that runs slowly on every device, can’t sync messages because “something went wrong” and doesn’t depend on electron to run. Also, not funded by the CIA.
Could you not apply this “funded by the CIA” argument to other things such as… The Tor Network? Which was created by the US Military Naval Research? Also some US government departments have donated to Tor. Does that mean Tor is breached?
Guys, I think all these computers took military funding. Wake up sheeple.
Okay that’s fair, even if remove that and assume they hold zero influence / there are no cleaver backdoors Signal is still not good when it comes to performance and reliability.
completely agree with you. I can’t believe why you are getting downvoted. Promoting a platform which is funded by the CIA, US gov and Israel. Completely insane really I don’t understand how people are still believing this. They really need to wake up to the truth otherwise things will never change. Privacy will stay an illusion we give ourselves to believe that nobody can read our messages (even if they absolutely can)
you believe every mathematician and the crypto people are conspiring to spy on us and call other people insane?
I wonder if it’s legit or just another attempt at manipulating markets
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 .
This comment is copy pasted from another thread where I had the same opinion
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Edward fucking Snowden has recommend Signal and I think if anyone knows whether it’s secure, it’s probably him and the NSA.
That and he is paranoid to a point where he physically kills all mics and cameras on his devices, so if he claims anything is secure, I will believe him unconditionally.
Same guy shilled anti-libre software and we should let stop us thinking for ourselves?
/s, right? I’m just hoping this is missing a /s.
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This is how you know the brain has rotten and become a slick turd.
Agreed. Making it a contest of “this talking head seems smarter” means exactly that.
Try explaining that to normies though. They don’t want to understand shit, and they want to think they are safe without understanding shit. That this is impossible they just don’t want to believe, because they don’t understand shit.
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That you can’t do something well or at all without understanding it is philosophy. Philosophy is weak in the sense that it exists on the same level as aesthetics or instincts. So it’s fighting instinct in a system built to make crowd management through instinct convenient, - in disadvantaged position.
Also NT people like to champion their stupidest ideas as a banner to assemble under. Stupidest exactly to exclude any rational reason, so that only the feeling of community would remain.
They don’t always say what they mean. They might say “this thing is better”, but what they mean is “I’m with the group which distinguishes itself by support for this thing, don’t be against us”.
Username related.
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so if he claims anything is secure, I will believe him unconditionally.
That’s much more stupid than just using Facebook and unencrypted e-mail with Outlook address for communication, but knowing how safe exactly those are.
They’ve never been shy about saying this.
