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.

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The Best Encrypted Messengers in 2024 (blog.thenewoil.org)

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

128 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I am a firm believer that there are many privacy techniques you should focus on before encrypted messaging because they will offer you much more “bang for your buck,” things like good passwords, two-factor authentication, and even encrypted email. That said, I still believe that encrypted messaging is a critical part of a well-rounded privacy and security strategy. While the vast majority of our day-to-day conversations may be benign, it can still offer a lot of insight into who we are as people – our routines, likes, and personal thoughts. This information – mundane or not – is worth protecting.

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[–] [email protected] 66 points 3 months ago (30 children)

Another basic thing -- If your messenger is throwing your messages in a notification; it's being logged. Google was found to be logging almost all notification content. Make sure your message app isn't putting the content of messages into notifications.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 months ago (2 children)

If the app implements their own notification system and doesn't rely on GCM then Google isn't able to log them as far as I know.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

UnifiedPush instead of their own implantation would be better for power consumption ig.

Overall a choice between which Notifier you want to choose would be nice.

Between the apps own notifier and UnifiedPush (also has a Fallback to GCM if wanted)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Sure -- but how many of them actually do?

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (4 children)

I can throw a few examples:

SimpleX
Threema Libre
Briar (afaik)
Conversations (XMPP client)
FluffyChat (matrix client), probably some others too
Telegram FOSS (Telegram fork), Mercurygram (Telegram FOSS fork)
Molly (Signal fork)
Session F-Droid (Session fork)

So, the answer is — almost every of them.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago

Element X (Matrix client). Basically anything that offers F-Droid or open source release will have builds without built-in notifications. Play Store/App Store builds requires using native notification systems.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

Briar just says x private messages

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (2 children)

But not Signal? I use Signal but I'm not sure I can get my chat groups to use something else.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago

Signal has a ton of the dependence on proprietary software. You won't find Signal on F-droid.

Best option is Molly foss

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

I mentioned Molly — Signal fork. It can show notifications via UnifiedPush or websocket.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

I just run it in the background. It pulls almost no battery so it is a non issue.

Also getting it to work with Unified push requires extra effort.

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

Yeah, configuring a mollysocket requires at least a little self-hosting knowledge.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

I would do the same but it uses too much battery for me so I had to figure out how to self-host ntfy and mollysocket.

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