Showed this information to my boomer mother who then asked my also tech illiterate step father what he thought.
“We don’t send sensitive information through texts.”
The ignorance almost physically hurts… Thinking that only the actual message content is important.
Or ignoring the pictures we send and the private things I talk about with my mom.
Do I think that specifically my information would be useful to China? Likely not. But I also have no idea what all is possible with that kind of information in the aggregate.
At the very least, I assume they will use it to manipulate us even more with disinformation.
Easier, imagine half the strangers you’ve met during the day reading your messages aloud with orcish laughs and judging the pictures.
But I also have no idea what all is possible with that kind of information in the aggregate
so does your mom and the general public. This idea and its impact is far too remote to people’s day to day life.
- “Yes, they can collect all they want, why should I care?”
- “My data is too insignificant to be meaningful for anyone, LMAO, do you think I am some kind of a CEO?”
it may help to try coming out with a story or incident that they can relate to. then again most of the time these stories will sound like a conspiracy theory,
How about we just do away with unencrypted messaging all-together?
“Don’t let CHINA read your messages! Let Facebook!”
I’m actually really not concerned about foreign governments spying on me but I am bothered by my own government, the guys with the guns who can arrest me, doing it.
Tho I suspect if the government is recommending ways to avoid messages being intercepted, they’ve already cracked how to intercept them.
What’s rich is the FBI promoting WhatsApp. Yeah, not a fucking chance.
Yeah we can all trust Meta, who never should have been allowed to purchase Whatsapp for antitrust reasons exactly like this. Whatsapp was innovative and very successful outside the US, rather than compete with their own decent product Facebook just absorbed them and gulped their users.
That is why Signal exists.
Not to be too conspiratorial, but isn’t that a pretty good indicator that Meta capitulated and put a backdoor in WhatsApp for them?
I have tried, over and over with the people i communicate with daily(family), and because i take medicine they always say “have you seen your phsyc recently?, have you taken your meds?”
Well that would be fucking annoying as fuck lmao. Sorry you have to deal with that
For what it’s worth I’ve got a group of friends who don’t give a shit either. Like they take some weird pleasure in not using E2E communication apps and just use SMS. It takes 2 seconds to download a new app.
They can spy on me all they want, I got nuthin to hide harhar
Nothing to hide yet*. Just because you trust the current government and companies doesn’t mean you always will. Data harvested now can be used against you (or your family) in the future. How will these people feel when 20 years from now they are denied medical insurance coverage because they have some data on you that proves you used to consume something that is later proven to cause a medical issue. For example, 50 years ago people didn’t know that tobacco caused cancer. How would they feel if that information was used against them? What if just smoking even one cigarette increased their insurance premiums by double? These sorts of things could happen in the future. You never know how laws or economies will change, but one thing is certain: information collected on you now will never be used to your benefit, only to your detriment.
yeah thats the same response “nothing to hide blah blah”
Bruh wtf
Messages between two Apple devices are safe, and messages between two Android devices are safe, but messages between an Apple device and and Android device are vulnerable.
This is not very accurate. Some Android devices come with Google Messages, which will use Google’s encrypted version of RCS if the carrier supports it. People who don’t know what all of that means should not assume their messages are encrypted.
Anyone know if Google Voice is encrypted? I can read copies of my texts online so I’m thinking no. I’ve felt like the service has outlived its usefulness for me and that would be the final straw.
I just sent a test message from my GV to my normal carrier number. It’s regular old SMS. No, not encrypted.
I see no reason to believe that it is.
I find it useful when outside the USA to be able to communicate with American luddites who refuse to install messaging apps.
Use Signal or XMPP+OMEMO or anything else.
Mandate social media to expose an open API and use the chat function with an OTR plugin.
The solutions are all old.
It’s just interesting how it all went from promotion of corporate surveillance to comms protection when supposed corporate shills won the election.
Is Matrix Protocol good?
I don’t know.
That article may as well be sponsored by WhatsApp. Zero direct mentions of Signal, but tons pushing people to WhatsApp. That’s a bit disappointing.Edit: I was wrong, it does talk about Signal as well.
The second half of the article is about Signal.
It sucks they mention WhatsApp first, but I think the bigger omission is that they don’t mention non-US entities or anything you can self-host and federate like Matrix.
Matrix isn’t super private though. It’s halfway there, but compared to something like XMPP, it falls short due to the fact that any instance a user federates with gets a gigantic copy of all of their metadata, and the server operator can do whatever they want with it. So all you would have to do is spin up a new host, message a target user and get them to respond, and you’re done.
Oh, fair enough then!
ETA: Yes, the lack of mentions of Matrix, etc are a bit disappointing. But I think Matrix is waaay outside their target democratic.
Yeeahhh, they’re talking to like Grandma who barely knows what a text message is
Their target democratic is still in the matrix.
How, in 2024, are people still using TEXTs??
There are so many apps for encrypted messaging, even fricken WhatsApp.
How do people still use text messages
It’s an American thing.
Session is very good and doesn’t require a phone number (like Signal).
Clunky for the average joe
In what way? I find it exactly the same as Signal but without needing to disclose my phone number (and therefore more anonymous). The user experience, imho, is the same.
I don’t believe Signal requires a phone number anymore
It does. You just don’t need to give it out to communicate anymore
Ah gotcha. Thanks
Signal or WIRE.
When the article about end to end user encryption messaging platforms mentions neither I have to question why it’s even an article.
Signal or WIRE.
It does mention Signal lower down the article
