653
Good. It's the only encrypted channel I trust right now.
this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
653 points (99.5% liked)
Technology
68244 readers
5257 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I'd consider using them if I didn't need to use a phone number to register. My friends and family stick with Briar as a result.
Hey man, if you can convince anyone to use Briar, do that. I have better luck getting people to use Signal because it's way more popular and easier to sign up. And if I want to know if someone uses it, I can find out instantly.
Convenience vs security
Security vs having someone to message.
I've tried to get everyone I know on Signal, so far my mom is the only one who uses it and that's only when she accidentally taps the wrong icon when she intended to send me an SMS.
And then there's my stepsister who complains about not being able to have a unified chat because she and family are apple while most of the rest of us are android. Signal Diane, it's a cross app platform that solves your problem.....but no it's not apple so it won't work......🤬
How about this:
- Tell everyone signal is the best way to contact you because it works on all your devices (phone, laptop, desktop)
- When someone messages you on signal, be really responsive
- When someone messages you on SMS, be really slow, and occasionally mention how sorry you are about missing it
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(4 replies)
Matrix is also an option and heavily audited+ federated. And unlike Signal not based in the US.
And the best? You can easily selfhost a bridge to signal and WhatsApp.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Everyone hoping to get accidentally added to a government group chat.
Bad actors are sowing distrust by implying that Signal is not secure. Always remember that the powers that be don't want the public to have encrypted comms and would love to ban private messaging apps altogether. I could also be completely wrong and Signal is in fact a fed honeypot...
The code is open-source though, and I'm hoping that individuals more learned than I would surely alert us if there were any backdoors/exploits...
load more comments
(3 replies)
So who exactly is downloading the app as a result of this latest government scandal? I'm going to guess it's the maga crowd because they are this as an endorsement from their new king. But hopefully I'm wrong and it's a broad sweep of different users from across the political spectrum.
Why should it matter if the new users are all magas or not?
You wouldn't want the Signal brand to become linked to it.
"I'm on Signal, would you like to chat there?"
"What, on the MAGA Nazi app, are you joking? Of course I'm not talking to you there!"
Ideally you want a broad spectrum of people.
I know it shouldn't make a difference and people should base their views strictly on the technical and usability aspects of the app, but real life doesn't work that way. Perceptions matter.
TBH this is why I've never used Telegram.
Telegram is a great piracy app tbh.
Perceptions matter.
And this frustrates me to no end.
Yeah, I get it, you don't want to associate with bigoted people. But I wish people would take a step back for a minute and think. If everyone runs away the moment conservatives take interest in something, that means conservatives get an undue amount of power over you.
If we all largely ignore trolls, bigots, and bullies, they'll lose their power. I'm not saying to be tolerant of intolerance, I'm saying we shouldn't let them have power over us. Content moderation should take care of intolerance where it makes sense. On platforms like Signal, this means accepting that privacy means protection for both you and things you dislike. Yes, the platform will be used to arrange drug deals, facilitate pedophiles, and enable Nazis to communicate, but it also protects whistle blowers, people living under repressive regimes, and LGBT communities. Privacy means privacy, and that has value in itself.
Stop throwing babies out with the bathwater.
Sure, but that was before almost every app was a Nazi app.
people who react like that are giving them power
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
The chat space is problematic.
- There are a lot of apps that don’t encrypt at all (e.g. Google chat, discord, etc)
- There are apps that encrypt but they are subject to jurisdictions that can or may in the future force backdoors (e.g., Chinese apps, possibly telegram, possibly US apps in the future)
- There are apps that encrypt, are in countries that are privacy focused but are not for free (e.g., threema)
This contributes to a fragmentation that makes WhatsApp the app that-you-must-have
Sure it is supposedly encrypted but I would not bet my money that is without back doors
Not in the US, pretty much nobody uses it here. Which is really odd to me, since it's so prevalent elsewhere.
IIRC it's because US cell carriers don't charge as much as others for sending and receiving SMS
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
It just about always comes down to user error. The White House trusting Signal is very indicative of the effectiveness of the app's underlying protocols and the organization's commitment to privacy. This is definitely huge publicity and I hope Signal endures the limelight.
LOL what kinda bullshit comment is this?
The people in the White House are idiots. They choose Signal because they're either dumb/negligent -or- because they have been intentionally avoiding record preservation requirements.
Signal is a solid app for sure, but these dipshits didn't choose it for being the right tool for the job here, as it certainly is not.
-or- because they have been intentionally avoiding record preservation requirements.
It's this one
dipshits didn't choose it for being the right tool for the job here, as it certainly is not.
It was, actually. If they weren't dipshits it wouldn't have been a problem.
Signal, on your personal device, is fine for personal use. It is absolutely not fine for classified communication as the VP or head of DoD, as there are billions of dollars dedicated to compromising your phone.
The encryption doesn’t mean shit if they breach an endpoint or account.
If it was strictly personal chat, yeah, no problem, but they just have to assume the messages are being read by other nations.
That's absolutely correct. Everyone seems to fixate on the encryption, but hackers are lazy and they'll attack whatever is weakest. In this case that means the storage on the phone after it's decrypted.
Don't store classified information on your phone, regardless of what you use to transmit it.
load more comments
(2 replies)
It's not the right tool for their job but still a good tool for the laws they were trying to break...
load more comments
(1 replies)
The white house trusting signal is nice, but using it to circumvent official communication tools which document messages for the archives is not the way it should be used - they used the "disappearing messages"-feature as well. This usage is more in line with criminal organizations like the mafia or yakuza.
I believe some people have been ordered to archive the chat so that it can be presented to Congress in the future. Trouble is, looking at the screenshots it's already gone as they had the message lifetime set to a week.
I wonder if this will be seen as destroying evidence .
i'm pretty sure that there are laws regarding required archival, but laws seem optional for this administration.
There very much are law requiring archival, but now it's been ordered in the hearings as well. This makes it much more obvious that it's a problem.