Privacy

31993 readers

478 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

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Privacy minded instant messaging quest. (lemmy.ml)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

24 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hi,

I'm looking for an instant messaging ( IM ) ~~apps~~ software/protocol that run on Android and computer

and meet the following requirements :

Open source !
E2EE
Messages are send in direct ! (not passing by a server)
handle group
Truly private ! ( That's the tricky part )

The closest that I've found is Briar

+can work without internet ! (bluetooth, local wifi, files !)
+ use TOR
- Mutual party have to exchange key (or your can introduce someone)
- sending media suck for now, poor image quality
- no call or voice messaging

I've been looking for alternatives:

~~Session~~
- Sadly it keep ALL the conversation into server !!! so it's a no go.
speek
- I didn't try it yet, any feedback ?
simplex
- it look very promising ! (didn't tried it yet)
- + seem to handle multiple profile in one !
- + do not require that both party send an invitation !
  - and have also a optional long term address
- ~~! I didn't found (yet) if the messages are send in direct or pass by a server..~~
  It's not P2P all the messages pass by servers.. too bad.

All post about alternatives or experience with the one that I cited are welcome.

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

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

A little update.

I've just tested simplex on Android.

it's very well thought out ! The features make sense. UNFORTUNATELY it's not P2P ! all the messages pass by their servers :'( with Briar it's P2P.... weirdly they claim their way is better than P2P ! any comment on that ?

In my point of view, if messages are stored somewhere it's mean the can be process[^1] !

Cheers.

edit: lemmy link to their community [email protected]

[^1]: Copied, analyzed, cracked (Brut force or what ever)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Direct peer-to-peer connections giveaway your IP address to the person you're communicating with. Meaning anybody observing the network can see two people are specifically communicating with each other. Briar attempts to get around this by using Tor to obscure it.

But briar is using Tor as a relay, just like simple x does. The architectures are very similar from that lens.

To your threat model, ideally data does not rest on the network, but you have to assume any data that hits the network is being recorded by a bad actor to be analyzed later.