Signal is pretty good all around and phenomenal considering that it's free.
this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
15 points (100.0% liked)
Privacy Guides
16796 readers
1 users here now
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
This is a community for sharing news about privacy, posting information about cool privacy tools and services, and getting advice about your privacy journey.
You can subscribe to this community from any Kbin or Lemmy instance:
Check out our website at privacyguides.org before asking your questions here. We've tried answering the common questions and recommendations there!
Want to get involved? The website is open-source on GitHub, and your help would be appreciated!
This community is the "official" Privacy Guides community on Lemmy, which can be verified here. Other "Privacy Guides" communities on other Lemmy servers are not moderated by this team or associated with the website.
Moderation Rules:
- We prefer posting about open-source software whenever possible.
- This is not the place for self-promotion if you are not listed on privacyguides.org. If you want to be listed, make a suggestion on our forum first.
- No soliciting engagement: Don't ask for upvotes, follows, etc.
- Surveys, Fundraising, and Petitions must be pre-approved by the mod team.
- Be civil, no violence, hate speech. Assume people here are posting in good faith.
- Don't repost topics which have already been covered here.
- News posts must be related to privacy and security, and your post title must match the article headline exactly. Do not editorialize titles, you can post your opinions in the post body or a comment.
- Memes/images/video posts that could be summarized as text explanations should not be posted. Infographics and conference talks from reputable sources are acceptable.
- No help vampires: This is not a tech support subreddit, don't abuse our community's willingness to help. Questions related to privacy, security or privacy/security related software and their configurations are acceptable.
- No misinformation: Extraordinary claims must be matched with evidence.
- Do not post about VPNs or cryptocurrencies which are not listed on privacyguides.org. See Rule 2 for info on adding new recommendations to the website.
- General guides or software lists are not permitted. Original sources and research about specific topics are allowed as long as they are high quality and factual. We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.
Additional Resources:
- EFF: Surveillance Self-Defense
- Consumer Reports Security Planner
- Jonah Aragon (YouTube)
- r/Privacy
- Big Ass Data Broker Opt-Out List
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Hard to beat Signal for getting all the core elements of secure chat.
I'd argue SimpleX does it better, they're even modifying the Signal protocol to support post-quantum encryption. No phone number, uses the Signal protocol, and has no user identifiers at all (no usernames, no account numbers, no account at all; everything is stored locally on your device).
Oh also, before the reply that Signal is post-quantum already, here's an excerpt from the blog post I linked detailing why SimpleX's implementation is better:
unlike Signal design that only added quantum resistance to the initial key exchange by replacing X3DH key agreement scheme with post-quantum PQXDH, but did not improve Signal algorithm itself, our design added quantum-resistant key agreements inside double algorithm, making its break-in recovery property also quantum resistant.
There is much more detail in the blog post if you're interested. SimpleX also has an incredible whitepaper
If you're looking for something professional, Jitsi is open-source and only requires one person to have an account to use it... You might have a better experience if you self-host or find someone who does.
jitsi really screwed up, it's unusable now. they took down their default instance without explanation, and put it behind big tech logins.
half the public instances dont work either, there's no clear indication of e2ee in the UX either
They posted a reason, but unfortunately the reason was it was getting abused.
But I did discover something: the list of alternative servers, which might not have been very up-to-date anyway, has vanished from their servers sometime after February.
yeah as i said most of these dont seem to work either. sad shit.
Molly (signal fork on fdroid (works with standard signal)), SimpleX chat (fdroid repo), Session (fdroid), Jitsi (fdroid (main instance requires google or github, but a community instance likely wont)).
Can you run Simplex Chat?
May want to ask this in a Graphene community.
I use simplex with graphene os on my pixel 7 pro and it works great.
Yes, of course GrapheneOS can run SimpleX! SimpleX has no dependence on the Google Services Framework, and even for apps that do have GSF dependence, they can be run with sandboxed GSF. The only apps that don't work on GrapheneOS are apps that try to use the SafetyNet, which is mostly banking apps, or those that require GSF to have deep root privilege to operate.
The best options for you are going to be SimpleX Chat or Jami, depending on your use case. If you only need to make video calls, probably Jami is the easier option, but if you'd like to have a chat app with video call support, SimpleX is the right choice. SimpleX is also just a really good messaging app, because it has no user identifiers or accounts. They have a wonderful explanation of their method for two-way communication in their whitepaper if you're interested.
Also, video calling in a "secure environment", as you've stated, is not difficult in the slightest, and absolutely not impossible. There are plenty of options available. Others beyond the ones I gave are Jitsi (but it's gone way downhill; don't use it), Signal, Element (you do NOT have to self-host for it, you can use the main instance or any other instance), and the options open up to basically everything if you make a new user profile and install sandboxed Google Play Services in the new user profile (from the "Apps" app). With sandboxed Google Play, you can use apps like Zoom if you really wanted, but I'd strongly encourage you not to for the sake of privacy. You can download apps without signing into a Google account via the Aurora Store.
I use Jami for video chat