cross-posted from: https://monero.town/post/934733
SimpleX Chat
Private and Secure messaging platform without user IDs
Will this new messenger replace Signal?
by Evgeny Poberezkin
this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2023
71 points (92.8% liked)
Privacy
31837 readers
123 users here now
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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Oof, bad timing for that name selection. Especially with payment processing.
The invitation method is interesting, but will likely be its limiting factor vs its draw. Regular Jane/Joe wants to share their username, just not their number or email. Not being able to share verbally is tough.
Simplex has been out for a year or so.
It's tough getting people used to systems that respect privacy, since Out-of-band ID sharing is part of that.
I've found it easier to get contacts though the QR code
i like the whole concept but it seamed to good to be true and not some type of backdoored honeypot, ill guess ill check it out when enough people reviewed the sourcecode
Well, since it was audited quite awhile ago you could probably check it out now.
simplex.chat/blog/20221108-simplex-chat-v4.2-security-audit-new-website.html
back when I was using reddit, whenever it would be posted in /r/privacy or /r/privacyguides it would get like 30 or 40 upvotes in a matter of minutes. for a service that came seemingly out of nowhere, it really felt suspicious to me.
I think that's because it's the content for privacy subs. Now that it had been audited and privacyguides recommends it I put my trust into SimpleX
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
TLDR via notegpt
- 🚀 Simplex Chat: A private and secure messaging platform without user identifiers.
- 💡 Founder's story: The startup was founded in 2021, with ideas dating back to late 2019.
- 🌐 Join the group: Interested viewers can join the conference group to ask questions and try out the platform.
- 💰 Privacy and cost: Lack of privacy in messaging platforms can cost users real money.
- 🔒 Designing for privacy: Simplex Chat's design removes the need for user identities, providing a high level of application-level anonymity.
- ⚙️ Usability and future plans: Simplex Chat aims to be as usable as popular messengers while addressing the challenges of establishing connections and transfer anonymity.
- 🌐 Future evolution: The network is evolving into a two-hop mix network to further protect IP addresses and enhance session isolation.
Is it a simple chat app or something like Telegram with channels and groups support?
It doesn't have channels, only groups. It's more like Signal with no phone number req but with worse UX as a trade off
Signal only ask for a phone number to verify your identity... its far from private
It's more or less truly anonymous chat. Like you meet someone on the street and need to chat with them, but don't want to give them any personally identifiable info. It's really cool in concert, but good luck getting anyone to use it. Signal is good enough if you're paranoid. TBH Telegram secret chats are just as good for sensitive stuff and way easier to get folks to use.
...so, Briar, but new?
No link to a repo? I'm not going to watch a video to know what a project does or how it does it. No thanks.
Thanks.
So it has a new ID for each tunnel/channel/whatever. As usual, that comes with the downside of discoverability: how do you find all your contacts when installing the app? You always need an out of band transfer of the user ID - be it email, username, or a transient one like this.
I'm not sure how much better that is than existing chat apps that don't have discoverability.
OOB is arguably better for privacy.
How?
If the OOB is not encrypted --> hello MITM attack or impersonation (unless of course you're physically in the same place, which is quite limiting)
If it's encrypted, why not just keep using encrypted channel? I have to find an encrypted channel to initiate an encrypted chat?
I'm not seeing the benefit
I can give someone my ID in person. I control how it's delivered.