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Time to get serious with E2E encrypted messaging
(techcrunch.com)
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this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2025
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Signal requires a phone number on setup.
Also, matrix has bridges, which alone make it worthwhile for me. They, of course, don't help privacy, but they are so so nice for convenience.
Matrix is definitely slow though, and a grand majority of the clients are heavy terrible buggy electron apps. There are a few good ones ( nheko and the new beeper clients ), but even they have some rough edges.
I still use matrix all the time and love it.
If max privacy was the goal I think simplex looks wonderful. No required info for sign up, no way for them to possibly collect any metadata ( because there are no identifiers sent over internet for anyone at all ), E2EE, and decentralized.
I’ve been trying SimpleX a little this week. It hasn’t been great, unfortunately. It could be an iOS issue, but notifications aren’t coming through. Maybe Android will be better.
On iOS, I had best experience using element X, so far
I absolutely love Element X. Synapse has been low maintenance to self-host, as well. Win-win.
It is dumb and annoying and inconvenient but doesn't affect its use or privacy.
I do agree that SimpleX seems like the best chat option.
It creates a cost for spammers. They have to have an account with a Telco, which isn't free, which in a lot of countries comes with some sort of National ID to register. That's the reason.
Lol, let me introduce you to http://smspva.com/
No they don't, you can sign up with a VoIP provider.
It affects its use for me definitely. I don't want to have a phone number. At all.
How do you even exist without a phone number. How do you get cellular data? Does the government not require you to have one? Your employer? What about all the services that require one?
To be clear, I have a phone number, but I do not WANT to have one. Most aspects of my life I have removed my phone number from. There are still a few services ( like signal! ) which requires one, and I cope. Cellular data is also something worth avoiding, from a privacy perspective. It is very possible to live a life where you're never very far from wifi, especially in a city. I do not currently do this, but would love to one day.
How is public wifi more secure than mobile internet?
For both, you need minimum a VPN connection outha there (to your home ideally, where you are in control of filters etc.) to get some privacy.
Mobile data you pay a service provider for and link all of your information to ( address, name, etc ), and can be used by one company to track your location at any time with very high accuracy as long as you are near 3 cell towers. Public wifi gets no information about you other than your MAC address and that you're currently within it's range. There is no central body that can track all your movements. You could, theoretically, buy prepaid data plans to minimize the info they know about you, but then you have to buy a new one each month, and there's STILL one company tracking all your movements each month, though they don't really know who YOU are. They could still do traffic analysis to figure that out.
It's not that it's less secure, it's that it's worse for privacy.
Also, messaging over SMS / MMS is awful for security, which I lump in with the rest of this conversation. https://youtu.be/wVyu7NB7W6Y
I have to wonder if you could use a burner number and just disable it after setting up your username
I have created a telegram account like that. No username. The number does not exist anymore. It's been working as intended for the past 6 years or so.
I think you'd have a theoretical issue if the next person who got that number also tried to set up a signal account.
You might be right. I'll have to go double check, but I don't think that you can just set up a new account with the same number without the password you set up.
I might be wrong, though.
You can enable a registration lock, where anyone with your number would have to enter a pin to register an account with it. However, it removes itself if you don't log in for a while.
Yep, that's what I was thinking of. I guess just set a reminder to login every now and then (if you don't use regularly).
Sure but it allows VOIP numbers. I'm using a jmp.chat number with it just fine.
Good to know!
Is the phone number required for 2fa codes or anything like that at any point ?
I got an initial verification code and haven't heard from signal since. Signal doesn't support totp or SMS 2fa. But has a pin code set along with your password. A new device that is added doesn't have access to old messages unless you have the correct seed key iirc
Not anymore.
You can choose to share a username instead of a phone number, but they still require the phone number at setup iirc.
True.
Then your point…?
Yes it does
You're right. Only for setup though, which is something I guess.