this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2023
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Privacy

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I am looking for a solution to receive WhatsApp messages on my phone. I don't want to install the WhatsApp app on my personal phone, but it is on my work phone and its mandatory for my job. I held out for a long time but it is necessary that I answer messages on there.

Beeper.com is enticing but it appears to have a lot of trackers for an app that claims it respects privacy.

What do you guys think?

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[–] AProfessional 16 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

It is just a Matrix service, you can connect with any Matrix client.

[–] chockblock 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

So I can sign up for beeper and connect through Element or another Matrix app of my choosing?

[–] AProfessional 9 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yes. You can also self-host their bridges.

[–] chockblock 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Would self hosting be possible (and fairly reliable) on a SBC?

[–] AProfessional 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I’m not sure what an SBC refers to, but the matrix server is pretty heavy unfortunately.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Single board computer (such as Raspberry Pi). As someone who used to host a matrix server I would agree it is fairly heavy and I was the only user of it. There are guides out there for setting it up on a Pi (example) so I suppose it is doable.

[–] chockblock 1 points 9 months ago

oh okay, ya I meant single board computers like a raspberry pi

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Pretty sure the beeper app is just a fork of element with added ui for interacting with different bridges.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

What password do you use?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 9 months ago

Beeper provides a free service to bridge all your chats into the same place, including traditionally secure applications like signal with end to end encryption. By using beeper, you are letting them decrypt all your signal chats and re-encrypt them on their servers. I wouldn't trust a paid service with my privacy on this level, much less a free one. An alternative model could have installed the bridging and stuff directly on your device in the app, but from a usability standpoint that becomes less convenient especially when trying to port all the chat applications to all the platforms. They are just a hosting service for open source bridges with a nice closed source client.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Is this the same as Beeper.com? Beeper.im doesn't go anywhere for me.

[–] chockblock 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

correct, I typed it wrong. It is Beeper.com but for some reason I thought it was beeper.im

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You can just edit the post.

[–] chockblock 4 points 9 months ago

Ok great, coming from Reddit, I was unaware I could edit the post title. thanks