Privacy

32165 readers

913 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

How save is XMPP really? (self.privacy)

submitted 1 month ago by andylicious1337 to c/[email protected]

18 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Ok so, here I am again asking another question 🙈🙊 But hear me out: I read this post here about, if there even is a good privacy messenger that can be trusted. Someone in the comments mentioned Conversations (a XMPP client for Android). This made me look into XMPP and at the moment I am giving Conversations a try. Reading into XMPP, I couldn't find a problem security or privacy wise. Also it seems like it does not matter what server I use (atm. we are on 07f.de) since it is all e2e with OMEMO. Am I missing something or is it really this good? And if I dont trust anyone, I could host my one instance of ejabberd, right?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

You have to trust the servers with your metadata, and that the servers have their inter-server communication locked down, but at least you can choose/operate servers.

Some clients are a bit flaky with their e2e encryption defaults or from a UI perspective it is easy to send an unencrypted message (in a new chat for example) before noticing that was how it was set.

There are a few XEPs the server needs which enable things like OMEMO, efficient mobile data/battery use, offline and multiple device deliverability, file transfers, etc. Audio/video calling has various requirements as I think xmpp only facilitates the setup of the call.

[–] andylicious1337 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

ok but if I'd recommend a client to the people I want to text with via xmpp I can be certain which client they use. My idea isnt to write with strangers but only with real people I know (friends and family).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

It is great as a private communication app for a close group. I'm running my own server because you have to trust your server operator with metadata, and because I found random public servers to be too short-lived for sustained usage by non-tech people.