How have others gotten friends/family to make the switch? I’ve been doing a cleanup of my digital life over the last year or so and am trying to move to using more privacy friendly alternatives where possible.
example: I’d love to switch to Signal only but everyone I know only uses WhatsApp. I’ve mentioned switching to people in the past but it’s always the same response (I don’t have anything to hide)
Signal is not much better than WhatsApp or any other walled garden messenger without provider choice. Don’t waste your time and energy to move people to walled gardens. A better idea would be to use providers and apps that support the federated internet standard XMPP: https://joinjabber.org
Despite being around for a while, that project is incomplete and/or insecure depending on which encryption protocol you want to choose (the best one is still labeled with a warning that it is just experimental). And then you have to hunt down a client that supports the features you want, which is another headache…
Yes, the XSF has a very high bar what a standard is and what not, so the many protocol extensions are labeled experimental. However that doesn’t mean implementations are “incomplete” or “insecure”. OMEMO has good support nowadays and the implementation in Conversations has been independently audited.
The Conversations Independent audit casually mentions forward secrecy was broken, and that the documentation itself was out of date… And that was at the time the audit was released. The website doesn’t mention if Conversations took these recommendations into account, either.
And that’s just if we assume users only want to use one device at a time, and they won’t touch a desktop.
It’s been 8 years, how regularly should I check back to see if OMEMO is accepted as a standard draft?
Privacy does not necessarily mean interoperability. XMPP is trapped in the past because it cannot roll out changes, including privacy enhancements that Signal has delivered
Sorry but I’ve been burned by WhatsApp before. Not wasting time on moving my contacts to another walled garden again. XMPP is actively developed and has most privacy features Signal does + most providers don’t require a phone number and let you connect over Tor. Doing things properly and in an interoperable way takes more time but is absolutely worth it: https://snikket.org/blog/products-vs-protocols/
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !privacyguides@lemmy.one
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.
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.
Signal is not much better than WhatsApp or any other walled garden messenger without provider choice. Don’t waste your time and energy to move people to walled gardens. A better idea would be to use providers and apps that support the federated internet standard XMPP: https://joinjabber.org
Despite being around for a while, that project is incomplete and/or insecure depending on which encryption protocol you want to choose (the best one is still labeled with a warning that it is just experimental). And then you have to hunt down a client that supports the features you want, which is another headache…
Which encryption protocol is labeled with a warning? The link I posted makes choosing a client very easy.
The good one, aka OMEMO, which is mentioned on the site but not in the app recommendations
Yes, the XSF has a very high bar what a standard is and what not, so the many protocol extensions are labeled experimental. However that doesn’t mean implementations are “incomplete” or “insecure”. OMEMO has good support nowadays and the implementation in Conversations has been independently audited.
The Conversations Independent audit casually mentions forward secrecy was broken, and that the documentation itself was out of date… And that was at the time the audit was released. The website doesn’t mention if Conversations took these recommendations into account, either.
And that’s just if we assume users only want to use one device at a time, and they won’t touch a desktop.
It’s been 8 years, how regularly should I check back to see if OMEMO is accepted as a
standarddraft?How regularly should I check if Signal has become an interoperable internet standard?
Privacy does not necessarily mean interoperability. XMPP is trapped in the past because it cannot roll out changes, including privacy enhancements that Signal has delivered
Sorry but I’ve been burned by WhatsApp before. Not wasting time on moving my contacts to another walled garden again. XMPP is actively developed and has most privacy features Signal does + most providers don’t require a phone number and let you connect over Tor. Doing things properly and in an interoperable way takes more time but is absolutely worth it: https://snikket.org/blog/products-vs-protocols/