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this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
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The Signal messenger and protocol.
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In an evil world bribery is the only way to get things done.
My friends wanted to move off Telegram to Signal. I said sure let's move off Telegram, but let's move onto Matrix instead. Now I have to use a Matrix bridge to talk to them and I still had to install Signal lol
I mean Signal is definitely better than Telegram, but if we were going to make a move anyway, I would've preferred the one that doesn't require a phone number, or even the existence of a phone.
My whole life I kept trying to move people to the better chat program/app. It's a waste of time. Either they'll do our don't on their own time.
Maybe simplex or Threema for that. Matrix is like replacement of IRC
Nice! How were you successful?
Nice!
Maybe that's is the way... Big corporations are silently inserting their corporate dicks in our asses by convincing or bribing their way by some propaganda or some gain.
Signal vs session: which is better?
Signal is better than Session if you value privacy:
The Session developers dropped Perfect Forward Secrecy because it would be hard to work around it.
First things first, let’s talk about what we’re leaving behind: Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) and deniability.
Source: https://getsession.org/session-protocol-explained
In plain English, they dropped a security feature for their own convenience to the detriment of their users' security.
For anyone unsure what PFS provides:
The value of forward secrecy is that it protects past communication.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_secrecy
The Session devs also claim:
Session provides protections against these types of threats in other ways — through fully anonymous account creation, onion routing, and metadata minimisation, for example.
Reading between the lines, we can interpret that as introducing security through obscurity, which is generally considered bad practice - https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/656.html
Lastly, Session does not provide quantum resistant encryption, the latest and greatest tech in ensuring your messages stay private. Signal, SimpleX (via PQXDH [1] ) and iMessage (via PQ3 [2] ) - as far as I'm aware - are the only messaging platforms that support quantum-resistant encryption.
If you want something like Signal but without phone numbers, give SimpleX a try. It's basically a fork of Signal with a ton of privacy features, like working without a phone number. I like it but the UX still needs a lot of polish before I try getting family/friends on it.
Afaik session's main thing is that it's like signal but without phone numbers. While there are cases where one might prefer that, the use of phone numbers does provide some benefits. It makes things simple so even my elderly parents can use it. So it's not that one approach is better, there's just different use cases
Musk once wrote “use signal.” Since I learned that I’m a bit paranoid about it.
Also it’s banned in Russia? There’s a reason.
Musk also said not to use Signal [1] - I wouldn't put any weight behind anything Elon says, right or wrong.
I should add, Signal and SimpleX are best in class when it comes to private messaging. If anyone says otherwise, please provide evidence.
Russia prefers services they can spy on.
If an E2E encrypted messenger is banned in a country, it is like a badge of honour I guess.