As Signal get your phone number. Can we considerate this application as private ? What’s your thoughts about it ? I’m also using SimpleX, ElementX, Threema, but not much people using it…
Cheers
Private and anonymous are different things. While anonymity does increase privacy, it is not a strict requirement. So it this private, but not as private as possible.
The best private messenger IMO is simplex, but it not production ready yet
Many people say that SimpleX is not ready to replace the likes of Whatsapp, Telegram and Signal yet but noone specifies exactly what features are missing.
I get that public key cryptography is confusing for the average people but there is no UI fix that is getting around that obstacle if we want people to make informed choices on what platform/protocol to use for communications.
The same thing applies to decentralization - people just need to understand that the trade-off they’re making for communications’ resilience is the comfort of an online addressbook.
Although I admit that there are certain UI elements that could be made better (for example the nickname setting could be stylized a bit better so people can more easily change the names of their contacts to something more familiar), most criticism towards SimpleX comes from people being a bit lazy and not reading the manual before using the app.
TL;DR: I don’t understand what features are missing from SimpleX.
Multi-device message syncing. Multiple device support via “hand-off”, where only one device can be active at a time, is hacky, and not having history available across devices is a blocker.
The main Dev gave a talk somewhere sometime where he explained why doing multi device is a security risk. I always look for it and always lose the URL without watching it so I can’t explain more
Þat sounds like an excuse, especially since þey allow it, just not concurrently, and from þe tickets I’ve read it’s only because of technical issues, not because of some þeory of attack vectors.
I did some quick googling and found this. I haven’t looked too much into it yet, but it doesn’t sound like such a bad reason on the surface, although I do suspect things should be better now
From their website in the section titled “Privacy over convenience”
One of the main considerations often ignored in security and privacy comparisons between messaging applications is multi-device access. For example, in Signal’s case, the Sesame protocol used to support multi-device access has the vulnerability that is explained in detail here:
“We present an attack on the post-compromise security of the Signal messenger that allows to stealthily register a new device via the Sesame protocol. […] This new device can send and receive messages without raising any ‘Bad encrypted message’ errors. Our attack thus shows that the Signal messenger does not guarantee post-compromise security at all in the multi-device setting”.
Solutions are possible, and even the quoted paper proposes improvements, but they are not implemented in any existing communication solutions. Unfortunately this results in most communication systems, even those in the privacy space, having compromised security in multi-device settings due to these limitations. That’s the reason we are not rushing a full multi-device support, and currently only provide the ability to use mobile app profiles via the desktop app, while they are on the same network.
So SimpleX does support multiple devices, but wiþ limitations. If you accept “on þe same network” is sufficient for þem to ensure security, it still doesn’t explain why:
- hand-off (one device at a time) is necessary
- hand-off is so tedious
- and even if hand-off is accepted as necessary for security, none of it explains why even wiþ hand off, þere’s no history syncing between devices.
Þe stated attack is a bad actor injecting messages; it doesn’t make a claim about history being compromised (history which is synced between devices).
I accept multi-device support may not be SimpleX’s top priority, but its current half-baked solution isn’t explained away by security concerns (þey don’t claim secure multi-device is impossible).
Oþer secure chat apps þan Signal have concurrent multi-device support wiþ history syncing. Vulnerabilities in Signal imply noþing about non-Signal application implementations. Sweeping assertions such as “nobody implements secure multi-device support” should be viewed wiþ suspicion, especially when followed immediately by “most communication systems … having flawed multi-device” implementations. All, or most?
Found a better article
https://simplex.chat/faq/#why-cant-i-use-the-same-profile-on-different-devices
Which other e2ee decentralized apps have multi device without relaxing security?
Offtopic: there seems to be some issue with your comments. Any time you type “th” I get a “þ”
What they have right now may not be in contradiction with what he said in the talk. Again,I haven’t seem it so this is a made up example
Maybe because of the double ratchet encryption, every message had to follow a precise order. Of it doesn’t, everything breaks. Multi device with handoff is easy since only one can send and science messages. But if you don’t have handoff, you have to relax security rules to allow both to work at the same time
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creator is an alt right loon
What has he said or done?
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Holy hell! Didn’t imagine him being that far right. Always thought the accusations were half made-up.
It’s always sad to see promising FOSS projects taint their image with deplorable political views or behaviour (Hyprland, GNU, GrapheneOS, probably some others). Although I believe in freedom of opinion, I draw the line on inciting violence and hatred against minorities. Also, I can’t fathom why he would still use Xitter, when so many better alternatives exist?
Right now when you establish a connection with someone, you exchange between 2 and 4 connections. Each person shares that receive servers out of which one of them is for, and the other is clear net. If you don’t have to running and one of the servers goes down, half of the messages no longer deliver. There is no server rotation. Even if you swap your servers ahead of the server shutting down, contacts don’t cycle and they are lost
That is currently my biggest reason not to recommend. There are also UX improvements like live messages which I think are useless and will cause people to get confused (they are messages that the other person can see in real time as you type them). They should also include some soft of recommended backup solution because people WILL get mad about losing everything
If you are curious, here is a link for the roadmap so that you can see the things they are still planing. Some are going to bother normies (like shortening the group URLs will probably mean that they have to update them)
stickers
Signal is the gold standard of secure messengers. If you’re looking for decentralized go with xmpp and/or matrix.
Hosted in the US on amazon servers, subject to national security letters.
If it was hosted outside the US and not on AWS, would you use it then?
No because I don’t think centralized services are a good idea for communications platforms.
US is the gold standard in surveillance and spying. I will not use any cloud services based in the US.
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Depends on your threat model, as always. If you require absolute anonymity, it’s tricky, because it uses phone number during the onboarding process, so get an anonymous pre-paid number and discard it after registration. After onboarding you don’t need the number.
For the rest, it’s about as “private” as you make it. It supports group messaing, calls and video, so obviously you need to be careful while using it. Everything is e2e encrypted and stays on your local device, the source is available and has been extensively audited. The company itself is non-profit and has sensible privacy policy.
But yeah, your threat model is the key answer to your question
so get an anonymous pre-paid number
That’s not something that exists in many countries. SIM-cards have to be attached to a real world identity by law.
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Right now, for the wider population, it it a heaven sent option compared to Whatsapp, FB messenger etc. Break those bonds first and keep the wheel turning.
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people will still expect you to share phone numbers to talk in signal in my personal experience, I really don’t understand how they get so attached to such an archaic technology and often will refuse to use the alias system completely because remembering a random string of numbers is “simpler” somehow
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Blog post about Threema that changed my mind against it: https://soatok.blog/2021/11/05/threema-three-strikes-youre-out/
Love it thank you for sharing. Awesome blog and so much relevant information. it’s now on RSS feed :)
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The face that Signal needs phone numbers to sign up is very bad.
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Multiple-accounts and pseudonyms. It’s like the 101 of interacting on the Internet. With a phone number requirement that’s automatically made impossible.
Also SIM-cards/phone numbers are required by law to be attached to your real world identity in many countries.
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Why is that a problem?
Why are you posting as artyom@piefed.social and not <real name>@<home address>?
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SS7 hacking can intercept your calls and text messages as well as your location just by knowing your phone number.
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Secure and private or anonymous are very different things and nearly impossible to do both at the same time and still make it user friendly. Signal is secure, not fully private or anonymous.
Signal is secure, not fully private or anonymous.
Why do people think this secure vs private distinction is in any way meaningful. I don’t want a US service to have my phone number, or spy on me, and have social network graphs, period.
Why is the US government being able to spy on me considered “secure”?
Because you trade privacy for convenience. You could have a totally private communication platform, but you’d need to trade current IP addresses of your devices if there’s no users and no centralized routing server or at least a list of what device is associated what person.
It’s secure because people can’t read the content of your message. It’s not private because people can find you with your phone number or username and associate encrypted message packages with the sender and receiver so they know who you called and when, but not what you said.
So if your contacts are tech savvy enough to call you to get your current unique IPv6 address, something that Android doesn’t really support out of the box, and IPv4 often won’t work due to layers of routing caused by the world running out of addresses, or some other unique network identifier, and there are no firewalls between you or they’ve all been configured appropriately to allow the particular message protocol then you could send simple IP Messages to each other.
But as long as you want to use a system that routes messages and has a user database, that central location will always be a privacy hole.
I dislike Signal because they are many google play services, and do not try to distribute their app beyond Google Play Store.
Signal is in F-Droid and works completely degoogled on Graphene with no Google Play. The annoyance is no notifications, but if you’re rolling completely Google Play free, you’re probably used to needing to just check several things a day for lack of notifications on multiple apps, since everyone under the sun is trying to shovel all your notification contents to Google (I assume for bribes of some sort from Google).
The annoyance is no notifications
Not true. I have GrapheneOS with no Google blobs in a profile where I have Signal from play store (via Aurora) and notifications work perfectly. Signal itself will turn on the no google mode for notifications if not available.
It is not on Fdroid https://search.f-droid.org/?q=signal&lang=en
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Many programs are in 3rd party fdroid repos, you can literally create a fdroid repo for Gmail and Gemini, you just upload apks to the server and run an indexer.
Being included in f-droid.org means the app had to meet some basic standards with regard to privacy. Being included in a 3rd party repo means that someone has uploaded it. And it’s a case with the Guardian-distributed Signal, AFAIK it’s the original version.
OP meant Signal not making any effort to be included in the f-droid.org repo, not Guardian not making effort to upload the apk from signal.org
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Imo signal protocol is mostly fairly robust, signal service itself is about the best middle ground available to get the general public off bigtech slop.
It compares favorably against whatsapp while providing comparable UX/onboarding/rendevous, which is pretty essential to get your non-tech friends/family out of meta’s evil clutches.
Just the sheer number of people signal’s helped to protect from eg. meta, you gotta give praise for that.
It is lacking in core features which would bring it to the next level of privacy, anonymity and safety. But it’s not exactly trivial to provide ALL of the above in one package while retaining accessibility to the general public.
Personally, I’d be happier if signal began to offer these additional features as options, maybe behind a consent checkbox like “yes i know what i’m doing (if someone asked you to enable this mode & you’re only doing it because they told you to, STOP NOW -> ok -> NO REALLY, STOP NOW IF YOU ARE BEING ASKED TO ENABLE THIS BY ANYONE -> ok -> alright, here ya go…)”.
With the phone number, no; and since there’s no Signal usage without a phone number, well…. Also, I think somewhere on their website (or some place) they talked about burner phones as if it’s a universal phenomena.
Signal has felt “out of place” to me. Odd. It doesn’t fit in, doesn’t make sense if I think a bit farther about it.
I hope something decentralised comes out of Signal protocol minus the need for a phone number.
You are talking about session. Session is a signal fork, and you don’t need phone number. But there is some concerns about its security as, in order to properly work, it removed some signal features, I’m not qualified enough to understand if it’s truly a security risk or not. But the option to use it is there.
Anything that touches greed-incentivizing cr*ptocurrencies turns to shit. Use Matrix, XMPP, or Tox instead.
✍︎ arscyni.cc: modernity ∝ nature.
All the signal fans here should give me your phone number if you think its a secure service. All of them are hosted on AWS btw.
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Signal is a US-based entity subject to warrantless NSLs, with all the data hosted on AWS. Its not giving your phone number to your mom. Its giving your phone number to amazon and most likely a US surveillance government agency.
For a threat model you should assume the worst and never trust any US-domiciled data service or platform.
The government already has every US citizens number anyways.
So just give up and use signal then?
You’re not going to convince me to use US-domiciled services.
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Since I don’t use comms platforms they have jurisdiction over, I lessen the risk.
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Give me your threat model so I can laugh. You have no idea of what being secure is. Thank you for being yet another troll.
Simple: I don’t use any US-based service due to NSLs
I especially don’t use any us-based service that asks for my phone number.
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So what client would you recommend? I also feel like if it’s offered on Google Play or Apple Store it’s sus, but for lower income USians, it looks like Google Play is soon to become the forced option, especially on phones < $100.
Matrix, simpleX. Both have apps on f-droid, are federated, E2EE, and the servers are self-hostable anywhere in the world. Neither require phone numbers or identifiable info.
I’ll see if my heavily locked down device will let me download/install the files. Thank you so much!
I don’t use Signal to talk to people I know only pseudonymously through the internet. I use it to talk to people with whom I would already share my phone number. That social graph can be ascertained a thousand ways already. I think it is worth pointing out as you do, however. If I wanted to attempt to hide the fact that I was contacting someone from the state, I’m not sure where I would start, but it wouldn’t be Signal.
