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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Is there any good private messenger at all? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've been inspecting this topic quite a lot and I'm a little confused now. So, we have reasons not to use Signal, reasons not to use Matrix, there were also some claims about Session being a fraught. Briar is mostly activists related (not very suitable for daily use), XMPP lacks good clients and suffers from fragmentation of protocol standards implementation, SimpleX is too feature-incomplete (no UnifiedPush support, big battery drain on Android, very decent desktop client without any message sync). I can't say a lot about Threema or Wire, as I'm not very familiar with them.

So, my question is — is there any good private messenger at all? What do you think is the most acceptable option?

EDIT: In addition to my post:

All messengers have their flaws, I'm well aware of that. I was interested in hearing users' opinions regarding these shortcomings, not in finding the perfect messenger. I may have worded my thoughts incorrectly, sorry for that.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (5 children)

It really just depends on your threat model.

Think it in this way: What is the most secure way to walk in the city? You'll need a team of armed bodyguards and wear a full bulletproof vest. Do you REALLY need this level of security? Who are you protecting from? If the answer is a criminal organization or law enforcement, then yes, probably. But if the answer is a random thief, then you'll probably need to just carry a gun, pepper spray, knife etc.

Same goes for privacy online and messenger in this case. Are you an activist or a drug dealer? Then you'll probably need Tails + something like SimpleX via TOR. Otherwise, if you are just concerned of typical surveillance capitalism (and don't want the government to scan your chats like it probably will in the EU after Chat Control), in my opinion, Signal is the best compromise of privacy, security and convenience.

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

I have family in China and I need to communicate with them. Seems like a pretty common threat model. Signal works only with a foreign SIM and that's only tolerated with tourists. XMPP servers get blocked almost immediately.

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

does signal's censorship circumvention work for them? It is also possible to use Molly (signal fork) which supports TOR via orbot. If they cannot sign up in the first place, you could use SimpleX chat with TOR also via orbot, but you should figure out a way to send them your link or QR code without the government knowing, or they might get in trouble.

Molly (signal fork): https://molly.im/

Use TOR in China: https://support.torproject.org/censorship/connecting-from-china/

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