Finally, we can have usernames in Signal instead of giving our phone number to everybody.

    • Is Session actually secure though? I know they’re based in Australia, and as an Aussie myself, holy fuck would I not trust this country for even a fraction of a picosecond with anything private or sensitive. We have some of the world’s most draconian and far-reaching digital privacy and surveillance laws, and I’m not ready to accept that Session hasn’t been secretly compromised by the AFP, given the law against revealing government backdoors.

      Happy to be proven wrong, but I always err on the side of extreme caution when it comes to Australia. Digitally, we’re closer to the CCP than any of our fellow western nations.

        • I’m not the person you responded to, but the Assistance and Access Act 2018 is probably a good place to start. Here is a page from the Aus Government about it, but the very short version is that the government can ask tech providers to assist them with building capabilities into their systems to allow the government to access data to help with the investigation of certain crimes. In some cases these will be voluntary requests, in other cases they will be requests that must be fulfilled, including asking providers to add capabilities that the government has developed.

          There’s a lot more detail about it, and the government insists that they won’t ask providers to create systematic weaknesses or to decrypt communications entirely, but it’s not clear to me exactly how those ideas are actually implemented. Unfortunately, much of the process (likely the entire process) is not made public, so as far as I’m aware there aren’t any good examples of requests that the government has made and what sorts of things have or haven’t been implemented.

    • Sign-up still requires a phone number… -.-"

      Thanks for the warning – that was my first question. It is my top reason (among many other reasons) for avoiding Signal.

      Checkout Matrix/Element or Session,

      All 3 of the sites you linked are Cloudflare sites (thus antithetical to privacy). Yes, I know you can use some of that tech without touching CF, but when they run CF websites it reveals hypocrisy & not understanding the goals of their audience.

    • If that’s a concern you could also always use Threema, which has been built from the ground up to use anonymous random IDs and optionally lets you link a phone number or e-mail address to that ID. The company has also won important court cases against having to store metadata preemptively and responding to blanket requests by law enforcement.

      •  Rikj000   ( @Rikj000@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
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        9 months ago

        I never heard about Threema before,
        quickly glanced at it’s Github repo,
        but I think I prefer Matrix/Element over it.

        Threema seems to largely rely om GMS (Google Messaging Service),
        meaning that most messages will go through Google’s servers,
        albeit end-to-end encrypted for now,
        I would not be suprised if Google would participate in “Harvest now, Decrypt later”.

        • There’s actually an option to turn GMS off entirely if that’s a concern (Settings–>About–>Advanced). It comes at the cost of slightly increased battery usage. Sadly Google does have a bit of a monopoly on mainstream Android there.
          Having said that, the messages themselves should never pass Google’s servers, just a packet saying “check your Threema server, there’s new stuff waiting for you.”

  • Too little too late, I’m afraid.

    I would love to use Signal more, but I have it for only 1 friend. No one else I know uses it. And the fact that they don’t support SMS is I imagine a large contributing factor.

    (Yes, I know SMS is inherently insecure & unprivate, but having that support is a good way to get users’ foots in the door, and also what good is a totally secure platform if no one uses it?)

    • There’s anonymity and privacy. This keeps you private from other users, and they already keep you private from themselves other than the initial sign up. What this service isn’t, and never has been, is anonymous. They don’t want that and there are big usability issues with an extended anonymous user base. Decide for yourself what you need

      • Anonymity is part of privacy.

        Specifically, anonymity is confidentiality of identity. Confidentiality is part of privacy, which is a broad concept. So when a tool or mechanism works against anonymity, it works against privacy. It may not work against a privacy aspect that you care about, but it’s privacy nonetheless.