Technology

The irony of you posting this on lemmy, which won't allow posting from a VPN or masked email addresses is not lost on me.

The amount of hoops I had to jump through to make this comment and maintain some semblance of privacy is infuriating but at least it's not reddit I guess?

But do go on about your security standards...

Edit: BTW, you can set signal to hide your number completely. Combined with FOSS-based encryption keys on-device makes signal the only choice for trying to maintain freedom of expression globally.

Nothing will protect anyone from messaging with a snitch who knows how to screenshot though. Food for thought.. get to know your neighbors now.

When did WhatsApp start allowing signups without a phone number?

I think it's by request. the fdroid team build every single app in their repos which means that they are not always fully up to date, so signal argues that whenever they need to push a security release people on froid would take forever to update.

I think I've had this issue with simplex. I've had to wait over 2 weeks for an update. That's why I'm using obtanium for it instead

Molly is in f-droid, though it's technically third party. Looks identical though.

I don't think that the founders are bad people. If you look at their history of work, they have done enormous amounts of work in the computer security sector. The founder, however, did run a cloud based WPA cracking service.

Meredith Whitaker, who is the president, used to work at Google doing research for "issues related to net neutrality measurement, privacy, security, and the social consequences of artificial intelligence".

In 2018 she then staged walkouts at Google over concerns of sexual misconduct and citizen surveillance.

The people on Signal's board seem to be trustworthy people with a pretty airtight background. You have to worry more about the mobile operating system compromising you than do you about Signal.

Does it really matter who made it if you can see the source code? You don't have to trust them.

You can use Signal with a different client. Signal being operated within the US has no effect. As of now the jurisdictions that I know of to be worried about are:

The UK, where Apple was recently ordered to remove end-to-end encryption features, and have been gagged from talking about it

Sweden, where a law is proposed to add an encryption backdoor

The EU, where leadership is pushing for an encryption backdoor

My understanding is that the Indian government under the BJP and Congress has been pretty consistently anti-encryption, and violated privacy rights

France arrested the founder of Telegram for using end to end encryption in Telegram

Australia in 2018 passed a law that enabled the government to require communications platforms add a backdoor for government decryption. The Director of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) said that “privacy is important but not absolute”. Which has the same vibes as "this is not about human rights, this is about human life."

WhatsApp was previously suspended in Brazil for refusing to hand over decrypted messages.

Austria is in the process of passing legislation allowing police to backdoor encryption in messaging apps

China and Russia are very obvious problems. Here's an easy one of many examples

The White House both in Trump's first term and in Biden's presidency were pro-encryption. Signal and Tor were US government funded projects. That's not to say the US is great on encryption, and there have been laws in the past that did/were proposed to limit it. But, as of now, it seems that the US is (edit: one of) the most hospitable jurisdictions for encrypted messaging non-profits.

BTW, I'm not saying using Tox is bad, or that Signal is good, I'm just talking about the US jurisdiction part.

Well yeah we could also use Briar or whatever... but would your grandma?