"secure" is relative. They may not be e2e encrypted, but they are still encrypted via TLS, like any HTTPS traffic. It's the same encryption used for online banking. If you care about your instance admin being able to read your messages, you should use Signal or a Matrix client though.

But remember that only a few years ago, almost nobody used e2e encryption, and it wasn't much of an issue.

Yep. That’s what he’d do. So basically he’d always want you to start the conversation.

If they're not end to end encrypted, your messages are not actually private on any platform.

It's a bit more obvious in the Fediverse than elsewhere, as direct messages are generally stored on two separate servers (sender and receiver). Furthermore each server tends to be smaller: if Zuckerberg decides to go through people's DMs it's unlikely to affect any particular Facebook user, but if the owner of a Mastodon instance does the same it's small enough that she could actually get an overview. It's mostly a false sense of security embedded in larger services, but people are all about having a false sense of security.

I also don't like the fact that Signal needs your phone number and that the only way to connect to other people is by their phone number.

TIL Margot Robbie has strong opinions about encrypted messaging apps. My respect grows by the day.

I agree. As soon as the update that disabled SMS was pushed to my phone, signal was effectively dead.

Integrating with SMS was so smart. The person who got me into it said "there is literally no reason not to do it" because it was seamless. And I used the same argument to get other people into it. But basically everyone stopped using it as soon as SMS was removed. I don't have the brain space to remember who is on signal and who is not and go to the appropriate messenger.

I read the whole long thread on their website where the devs were arguing in favor of this and all the reasons were IMHO stupid. I think someone wanted to tank signal. Got tired of funding it probably. It was too good to be true with no obvious business model so always thought the day would come, and it did. Too bad, it was very good at what it did.

I've posted this previously, but I'll repost again because I think its important people are aware when making a decision on a secure messenger.

======== Original Post: https://lemmy.ml/comment/1615043

Sessions developers dropped Signal's Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS) and deniability [0] security features. Personally I would not trust a product that drops an end-user security feature for the sake of making the developer's life easier [1] .

Using existing long-term keypairs in place of the Signal protocol massively simplifies 1-1 messaging.

For those unaware, PFS protects your data/messages from future exploits and breaches. With PFS, each message's encryption is isolated, preventing compromise of current and past interactions [2].

A simple example to illustrate why PFS is beneficial. Lets assume any 3 letter agency is collecting all Signal/Session messages - on top of the tons of data they're already capturing. The great thing is that your messages are encrypted, they can't see anything - YAY - but they're storing them basically forever.

Two ways they may be able to compromise your privacy and view ALL your messages:

1. A flaw is discovered that allows them to crack/brute force the encryption in weeks instead of years/decades/eternity. If you were using Sessions, because you use the same key for every message, they now have access to everything you've ever said. If you were using Signal, they have access to that one message and need to spend considerable resources trying to crack every other message.

2. Your phone is compromised and they take your encryption keys. If you were using Sessions, this again gives them access to your entire message history. If you were using Signal, because the keys are always rotating (known as ephemeral) they can only use them to unlock the most recent received messages.

It's important to state that both cases above only really matter if you delete your messages after a certain time. Otherwise, yes, all they have to do is take your phone and get access to your entire message history - which is why ephemeral messaging (i.e. auto deleting messages after a certain time) is crucial if you suspect you may be targeted.

[0] https://getsession.org/blog/session-protocol-explained

[1] https://getsession.org/blog/session-protocol-technical-information

[2] https://www.signal.org/blog/advanced-ratcheting/

This year. I gave it a VPS with plenty of cores and memory too. It's like once I got it working it would work for awhile right, nbd. But then when I'd join a federated room over on matrix.org it would literally take days to add it. I even smoke tested it with their federation tester.

The lockout I'm describing is like an auth bug. The moment you sign in in a couple different places it has trouble unencrypting messages and even if you verify the other devices identity it will act like it's still unrecognized, and delete messages. It happened to my girlfriend, then my friend, then me. Twice in two separate attempts to use it daily. I tried using it as a complete iMessage replacement across all platforms so I'm saying I was using it heavily.

And yeah I used docker too. It's a neat concept it just falls apart at scale from what I've literally seen twice. Doesn't matter what client I used either.

just yesterday element literally gave up on joining the nix matrix space after staying at joining for hours on my selfhosted dendrite instance

a week or so ago the exact same thing happened with the arch matrix channel

Hm... If they're not being stored on the cloud, that means offline users would never receive messages, unless Signal is purely P2P. I haven't looked at the project, or the source, but I find it hard to believe -- you can't really do user lookups without some sort of middleware in the cloud.

I talked about various audiences not just myself. The person I replied to talked as if the app was made for him explicitly. "VoIP is not something I'd care about, file transfers are" like this kind of talking is like bruh, the app is not made only for you.

We don't take kindly to people who think they're the only one here.

Honestly, I don't hate that Idea much bcoz I think it will help users switching from IG to PixelFed.

One of the most used feature of Facebook and Instagram is their messenger. It's much easier for people to use the same account they use for social media to communicate with each other. A direct messaging feature within fediverse would augment the current ecosystem and make more people transition away from big corporations

All existing messengers have "no walls" if you consider they all transfer data via TCP/IP. Except the wall is the encryption/higher level protocol. Now just replace TCP/IP with federated servers. Different messengers will be unable to communicate with each other because they'd need to implement the same encryption.

If you're able to standardize the encryption then things can interoperate if it's fediverse based or not.

That article was very informative, thanks!

To be a bit more precise, Signal is against federation from two angles:

• Innovation: Signal values absolute control over the protocol so that they can more rapidly implement UX experiences scene in other modern messaging apps. It also eliminates malicious or outdated servers changing the UX between users. Ultimately folks won't blame the servers, they'll blame the app, and stop using it.

• No rope for users: They seem pretty confident that the Apple-style of software and UX is right— if a user can change stuff enough to break it, they will. For secure messaging, they'd rather users have fewer choices to be sure it is secure.

Oh, that's a shame. It's one of the bummers of instant messaging, everything seems to be incompatible with everything

If there’s n of something and n+1 breaks it, then it was broken to begin with.

Competition is good, especially with regards to privacy and cyber security. Customers benefit when companies don't have a captured market. A lack of competition only leads to monopolies and stagnation.

If no one offers a secure product, then customers have no choice but to either not use anything or put up with it. Competition means that at any time a newcomer can offer a better product (that is hopefully open source).

Edit to add: Ideally you could message people on different apps with the same account. But I'll take fragmentation over a monopoly.

You are already on another social media. Just not a centralized one.

You are on the wrong platform then

I don't want to give strangers my personal cell, discord, twittter, whatever handle here publicly. If there is a need to exchange secret informatiom, how will you take this convo elsewhere?

Matrix has this. It's federated but doesn't communicate with Lemmy.

I’m not disagreeing with you. You’re saying that the fediverse produces badly designed and branded services that mirror existing apps with massive user bases, that won’t be great until a lot of users migrate over. None of that is wrong! It’s why Lemmy is a mess that constantly breaks, and Reddit is still way more useful, even if most people here hate it.

It’s just that most Lemmy users care enough about decentralisation to ignore those product downsides, in the hope that they it can be overcome over time. With a messaging product, that’s even easier. You can just install it and wait until other users join - network effects are ’much more limited than with eg Lemmy.

You’re trying to derive meaning from a system that doesn’t have one established objectively

You got like 10 people that basically said “i disagree” in voting format, nbd. Sometimes we have unpopular opinions, other times bots, other times who cares internet points