Messanger / Signal / Whatsup Alternative
Messanger / Signal / Whatsup Alternative
Is anyone here aware of some alternatives to mentioned instant messaging applications ? Alot of people keep mentioning Signal , however since it is US based I am not going to entertain it as a possibility.
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Wait, what's wrong with signal?
well .. US based.
It is a us based non profit that doesn't store any information about you, your contacts, or any of your metadata, and encrypts all of your data in transit and at rest, using a strong open source encryption protocol. Signals privacy is so strong that when delivering a message, they cannot tell who the sender is. It is developed out in the open and has been independently audited like four times.
Also you don't need to purchase the app so boycotting it really only harms you since every other messaging app (that isnt self-hosted) is objectively worse in all of these measures, or has no network effect.
Don't punish orgs who are doing things right.
https://therecord.media/signal-no-longer-cooperating-with-ukraine. Do i need to say more?
It is a us based non profit that doesn’t store any information about you
still it runs in AWS, Microsoft, etc servers, and as any centralized service policy and interests can change at any time in the future, which would be pretty bad when you have several countries fully depending on them, just look the current situation with whatsapp, you can not be resilient/sovereign like that
has been independently audited like four times.
could you provide source pointing to the security audits?
That's fair. My only real gripe with Signal is that it isn't federated. Matrix isn't ready for the general public and I'm doubtful it ever will be, so in the meantime Signal is the next best thing.
source for audits
Not me, but someone on the signal forums helpfully compiled many of them; there are a lot more than I thought! https://community.signalusers.org/t/wiki-overview-of-third-party-security-audits/13243
Not me, but someone on the signal forums helpfully compiled many of them; there are a lot more than I thought! https://community.signalusers.org/t/wiki-overview-of-third-party-security-audits/13243
ok I read it, these are no real security audits but academic reviews of protocol properties etc.
Matrix isn’t ready for the general public and I’m doubtful it ever will be, so in the meantime Signal is the next best thing.
yeah, it is too complex etc. take a look at https://arcanechat.me/ and https://delta.chat/ (I contribute to these open source projects) they are probably the decentralized messengers that are more on pair with WhatsApp etc. super easy to use, no phone numbers or any private data required
Not me, but someone on the signal forums helpfully compiled many of them
thanks for sharing!
That is a good take. However I could instead support European company with european people which is not to be neglected
That is completely reasonable and in every other instance I would encourage this, but there really isn't a secure, private (those are two different things; WhatsApp is (probably) secure, but definitely not private) alternative to Signal at the moment. Even if one did exist, it likely isn't compatible with Signal and would only serve to fragment messaging even further until it has more users than Signal already does.
I guess, I just want to encourage you to make changes where it really matters. Absolutely dump Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and other for-profit American manufacturing and services. But boycotting Signal doesn't really help the way you want it to.
Ultimately you have to decide what is best for you and I obviously can't and won't force you to use something, but I hope I can at least provide some perspective.
https://therecord.media/signal-no-longer-cooperating-with-ukraine. Do i need to say more?
Yeah, lots. Lots and lots.
In what way was Signal coöperating with Ukraine before? Signal only has access to when you created your account and the last time you connected to their servers; that's it.
In what way did Ukraine honestly expect to utilize this information in their war? I can't find any evidence that they've coöperated in the past, or that this would have been actually useful information. We have court cases proving they only store what they say they do:
everything in Signal is end-to-end encrypted by default, the broad set of personal information that is typically easy to retrieve in other apps simply doesn’t exist on Signal’s servers,” the company wrote. “The subpoena requested a wide variety of information that fell into this nonexistent category, including the addresses of the users, their correspondence, and the name associated with each account.”
Signal went on to further note that it “doesn’t have access to your messages; your chat list; your groups; your contacts; your stickers; your profile name or avatar; or even the GIFs you search for.”
The only data Signal was able to hand over for the accounts listed in the subpoena were the times and dates when they were created and the last time they connected to the app.
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/signal-grand-jury-subpoena-data/
Also, Ukrainians have and continue to use Signal every day. This isn't like Starlink turning off internet for Ukraine but not Russia; its Ukraine asking for information that doesn't exist and then getting upset that they didn't get the non-existant data. It's a complete non-story designed to get you to use weak messaging apps, don't fall for it. Signal doesnt want to cooperate with any government and this is a good thing for privacy.
Slava Ukraini, Fuck Putin.
It's serverless though, right? The messages aren't stored in any of signal's servers? Or am I mistaken?
It's also open source, so it would be possible just to fork and use a "European" version of it. Also, since it's open source, it's free to use, so no money actually goes to on American company by using it.
https://therecord.media/signal-no-longer-cooperating-with-ukraine. Do i need to say more?
Yep. I saw that this morning. if there's another better one I'll switch to that one.
It’s serverless though, right?
no, and in fact the cost of running it is really high because the server infrastructure they need to pay, they even say it themselves "Signal is expensive" https://signal.org/blog/signal-is-expensive/
it would be possible just to fork and use a “European” version of it
in theory yes, in practice no one has done it, and then you should not use Signal but the european fork which will not be compatible/federated with signal
https://therecord.media/signal-no-longer-cooperating-with-ukraine. Do i need to say more?
I think they are also non-profit company