Privacy Guides
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 We are not providing a platform for poorly-vetted, out-of-date or conflicting recommendations.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
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If you have to give up your phone number to register why would you get Signal over Telegram? All the people you aren't supposed to talk to are on Telegram and not Signal, so if you're giving up your phone number, why pick Signal? Because it's FOSS? What's the difference in outcome? Both end in a phone number request from the government that the service will comply with.
Because the threat isn't getting your number stolen, it's about the content of your messages. While the goverment cóuld ask your phone number, they likely already have it unless you got a prepaid trow away that you keep replacing regularily. And even then it cóuld be traced when used anywhere. What they can't get, is your messages. At least not decrypted unless you give it to them yourself. And those are way more interesting. But it's not even about the goverment per se, it's for everything from data hungry companies to your old crazy ex.
Telegram sends everything plain text and stores that on their servers. One man-in-the-middle and we got everything you've said.
WhatsApp says they have E2EE but is propietary and non-checkable, and from Meta who has a rep for finding ways to secretly and unlawfully grab data. Even if you (foolishly) trust them, they do grab metadata from your messages.
Signal isn't about it being FOSS, but about privacy. FOSS just means it's checkable, which is good for security and privacy. They have E2EE not only on message content but also on metdata (unlike most alternatives who only do message contents), do external audits, and are part of a non-profit (which means showing how money is received and spend).
Not the OP, but from a privacy perspective, I would pick Signal over Telegram. They both have some issues, but Telegram is not E2EE by default and is a bit if a pain to use E2EE consistently. And yet, Telegram claims to be super secure, etc. There are a bunch of other issues there as well. I'm not saying Signal is the best privacy tool out there. But, between the two, I trust Telegram a lot less.
https://signal.org/bigbrother/
I don't have enough money for a phone number to give to any government agency much less to Signal. My phone ran out of service months ago and no one in my family is even able to re-up theirs much less spot me the scratch to help me with mine. In a perfect world where I could afford a cell phone plan I'd probably go for both honesty. They both have access to perks that I could use. But yeah I'd choose FOSS any and every day.
It was a general question, I was just wondering why you want to go on Signal so much rather than Telegram. I know Telegram requires scanning a captcha to join, is it the same on Signal? If not, then I recommend you try using a free SMS service to register on Signal.
I've done this using Google voice. But they're probably other options out there.