Andromxda 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇹🇼

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wiki-user: Andromxda

  • 5 Posts
  • 7 Comments
Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: March 22nd, 2024

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  • your conversations are still tied to Google

    That’s simply false. Signal Notifications never include the content of the message or any metadata, no matter if they’re sent over FCM, APN, WebSockets or UnifiedPush (via mollysocket). That wouldn’t even be possible, since the Signal server sending out the notification doesn’t even have the key to decrypt the message. Only the users involved in the conversation have the keys, that’s how end-to-end encryption works. Signal simply sends an empty message via FCM (or any other push system), and the Signal app on your device then receives and decrypts the encrypted message and shows you a preview of the message content as a notification on your operating system.

    And every build of the Signal client for WhatsApp also supports WebSockets as a fallback push notification system, in case Play services aren’t installed or can’t be reached. The only reason why FCM is used by default is that it saves some battery, because it only maintains one background network connection for all apps, instead of each app handling notifications themselves.


  • so the company can be bought

    The company (Signal Messenger LLC) is fully owned by Signal Foundation, a 501©3 non profit organization.

    Try to use federated services

    I generally like this idea, and I also use federated services for things like social media, that’s why we’re having a discussion here on Lemmy. But it introduces some issues with private messaging, like lack of reliability, which sucks if you want to use Matrix as your primary messenger, as well as metadata leaks. Federation is not always the answer, and in my opinion definitely not when it comes private and secure messaging.

    they are more robust against hostile take overs

    Probably around 80-90% of Matrix users are on the matrix.org homeserver, so it’s absolutely not as decentralized and resilient as you think it is.


  • I currently use Telegram for my friends and family

    Telegram is probably the worst thing you could use, it doesn’t encrypt messages by default and they are stored on Telegram’s servers, so they can read them at any time.

    I’m also on Element/Matrix. Before I try to get my contacts to join me on there, should I be aware of any privacy issues

    Yes, Matrix leaks a bunch of metadata and doesn’t have post-quantum encryption.

    The best option is to use Signal. It uses end-to-end encryption by default for everything: Normal chats, group chats, voice and video calls and even stories. Messages are only stored on their servers (in encrypted format, so they can’t access them) until you receive them, after which they are promptly deleted and only stored on your device. And Signal has much better metadata protection than Matrix. The UX is also much better and less confusing, making onboarding new users much easier.