Knowing what a privacy nightmare all meta apps are, I’m wondering if there is an alternative option which is more privacy friendly but still has some of the ease and simplicity of some features such as messenger.
I already know there will be friends I can’t convince and thats fine, I may just have to accept that. But if I could avoid using it as much, I’d really like to.
Both Telegram and Signal are decent, tho they require a phone number to sign up and are more similar to WhatsApp. Then there’s Matrix, but it’s like the fediverse, you must find or create and instance, they might find it complicated. Same for IRC.
Signal no longer requires a phone number to sign up for. Also telegram really should not be recommended at all if the focus is on privacy.
Good on Signal, but what’s the problem with Telegram?
Encryption sucks and used to be a complete joke when it started
Telegram isn’t encrypted end-to-end by default; apparently if you do encrypt e2e you can’t access chats from multiple devices.
Signal’s protocol is widely understood to be the gold standard for security, which is one reason it’s been adopted for multiple messengers. Telegram has a bespoke protocol which is not as well regarded.
What else uses signal’s protocol out of curiosity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol#Usage
Wow I had no idea it’s what WhatsApp, Messenger, and RCS all use.
Not end-to-end encrypted by default, ad-financed, stores data and ecryption keys centrally, analyzes messages while they’re being typed etc. It isn’t really any more secure than even something like Whatsapp.
It does require a phone number. The option to generate a username is there if you want to chat with people on signal but don’t want to give out your phone number.
You still need a phone number to sign up.
I just tried installing Signal now and it’s asking for a phone number with no way to skip
Yeah, it does actually require a phone number, though you can use a landline and you can also hide that number for people you chat with.
How does the landline option work? Do they call you to verify?
Yeah, I believe you’ll receive an automated verification call.
Telegram is not secure, never was meant to be. Their employees can read your messages in 99% of use cases.