this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2024
588 points (98.4% liked)
Privacy
31942 readers
765 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
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Signal might be one of the most audited pieces of software in existence. Any criticism is likely either coming from or is supported by countries that fear encryption such as China, Russia and Iran.
The big downsides of Signal are that it requires a phone number and that is depends on Signals servers. That is it. You messages are completely safe as all messagers use the same underlying cryptography.
The audits mean nothing for a server domiciled in a Five-Eyes country. Signal has your phone number, and the other phone numbers you talk to (social connection graphs), and it is 100% illegal for them to tell you that they've been issued a national security letter divulging that information.
You shouldn't trust a server to do your computing for you. Assume any data the server has about you to be available to all.
The entire protocol is build under the assumption that you do not need to trust the servers. Let the NSA have then, it doesnt matter. On the other hand 95% of Matrix users are hosted on Matrix.org which was not only hacked several times, but would be an ideal target for any agency to compromise. Its naiive to belive the big Matrix hosts arent compromised. The only effective defense is to build your system around the assumption that the server is compromised, which is what Signal did.
Metadata is data. While we can be pretty sure that message contents are secure we have to rely on trust for the metadata.
I use Signal and trust it way more than most other apps but still, one have to be careful, a state actor could still find ways.