Privacy Guides
In the digital age, protecting your personal information might seem like an impossible task. We’re here to help.
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Self host your own istance of Matrix
Simplex, element(or most matrix compatible messengers) session, bchat. If the goal is to get your family to switch over though good luck.
You could try Session. It makes a session ID like this
. This can be used to contact people or for people to contact you. I’ve used it to talk to my SO a bunch of times.
I guess Matrix would be your best option then. I use Schildichat as client, which is a fork of Element with some extras.
But if you can't get a plan, why not get a prepaid burner SIM? You can buy a prepaid card for minimal amount and you generally keep the number at least for a year, and you put in 5~10 euro each year you can keep it active endlessly.
A lot of things require a phone number. Here, the goverment needs you to have one, but also most workplaces and even the DHL. Getting a cheap trow-away sim isn't a bad option. Especially since pre-paid SIMs aren't connected to your name like those on a plan are.
Session
Matrix is great, Element has a really nice UI for it. ~~Signal also does work without a phone number, in fact it doesn't really work for SMS anymore. Signal provides P2P for any communications with another Signal user. Matrix supports P2P as long as you set it up (encrypt a channel) and I think DM's are P2P~~
Edit: So Matrix is cool, End to End, NOT P2P, and probably the right decision for OP.
No…matrix is not p2p
I apologize, I was thinking End-to-End. Though would someone mind enlightening me to the difference? Is is just multi-client support? Or that there can be a broker in between?
Also, to everyone currently roasting me, here is what I was referencing
End to end means the users at the 'ends' have the keys to open the message and 'middle' is the server it goes through (that doesn't have the key so it can't read the message).
Ah, and P2P would have no middle man doing the hand-off?
Yeah, basically you both need to be online at the same time for the other to receive message. Which, as you can imagine, can cause problems. Also I'm not sure you'd need encryption for P2P messaging? Maybe from the service provider?
For some reason, I thought it was interchangeable terminology, I'm glad to understand better now. I could see a lot of P2P's forgoing encryption then, since presumably you're not hopping over any other devices or networks.
A phone is a radio broadcast device. If you're sending something unencrypted from it, anyone nearby can listen in to what it's sending. Of course, it's all compressed and sent with different protocols depending on what app you're using, so it's not trivial to read messages from everyone to everyone all the time, but if someone is determined it's quite doable. SMS messages in particular are famous for having that happen to them, but it can happen with any unencrypted message.
Good point, thanks for the insight. I was thinking p2p in the old school terms where there wasn't anything to intercept over the air (even though we were obviously talking about phones, dunno why my brain defaulted there).
peer to peer means that the information goes from one "peer" (device) to the other, no middleman
end to end encrypted means that the message is encrypted before transit and is then decrypted at the other "end" once it's on the recipient's device. end to end could have a server acting as a middleman, storing these encrypted messages, allowing for chat logs to be stored more conveniently and messages to be sent while one peer is offline.
Aaaah, got it, thank you so much for clearing that up for me. I apologize for my incorrect message then. From these comments, I'm inclined to say Matrix remains OP's best option.
Thank you for educating me! 😊
this makes more sense if you understand public and private keys
when encrypting a message, there are two keys. the public key can only be used to encrypt and the private key to decrypt. a recipient will put its public key out and a peer wishing to send it a message will use this key to encrypt it. once the message arrives, the recipient can use their private key to then decrypt the message
How do I use Signal without a phone number? Whenever I booted the app it needed a number.
Element/Matrix can be E2EE, it is most decidedly not P2P
did you mean E2EE? I don't think signal is P2P. the signal server relays the messages in between users
Yup, a Matrix client (especially Element) is a great choice.
XMPP. It's an old standard, there are servers you can get an account with or you can host your own. And with OMEMO encryption everything is end to end encrypted.
thank you! i was surprised not to see that one way more often. i guess it is, because ios doesnt have such a good client as conversations for android.
ive heard briar and session are good
I am a little confused what there there is to delete. All posts are public. A bot can can come and harvest at any time. No way to ever guarantee deletion. Otherwise my display name, user name, and email are more or less random. Only nonrandom thing is my IP address which changes too sometimes. What else is there other then writing patterns and what you say which is public anyway.
I'd suggest SimpleX, personally! Not only does it not rely on phone numbers, but because you add people through single-use links instead of using identifiers, there is no contact information of yours to be shared without you actively choosing to share it with someone yourself. I'd say it's pretty approachable, and the actual messaging experience is packed with a nifty feature set.
Yeah I think I'm going to try SimpleX! It looks the most promising. Private with no identifiers (that's quite a feat!) and pretty enough with UI that my parents can use it.
Does anyone have any recommendations for Element chat groups to join? All I find when I DuckDuckGo it is recommended clients that use Matrix, coding stuff, or weird sounding mathematical principles. Any groups involving FOSS discussions or ttrpgs would be great!
I would have made a new post but I didn't want to seem like I'm hogging the bandwidth on this group by posting so close together so I asked here. Hopefully that's okay. You've all been so helpful, thank you guys.
Yeah you know what, nah not touching Element. I joined the biggest RPG group on the site and it was all proud boys and the most professional looking InfoSec discussion board with over 1800 people is a dead group where people spammed gore pictures. Screw that, Element is a cesspool. Simplex is the winner Ding, ding ding, ding! I'm closing up shop now, I need to wash out my eyes
the one thing after playing with simplex, the 'no central id' is excellent for absolute privacy and they've implemented it a clever way. that id does let me resume a conversation between desktop and phone, using signal or xmpp. if it's possible with simplex i think i'd have to make a group (and that's only mobile to mobile, as simplex looks mobile-only)
If you have to give up your phone number to register why would you get Signal over Telegram? All the people you aren't supposed to talk to are on Telegram and not Signal, so if you're giving up your phone number, why pick Signal? Because it's FOSS? What's the difference in outcome? Both end in a phone number request from the government that the service will comply with.
I don't have enough money for a phone number to give to any government agency much less to Signal. My phone ran out of service months ago and no one in my family is even able to re-up theirs much less spot me the scratch to help me with mine. In a perfect world where I could afford a cell phone plan I'd probably go for both honesty. They both have access to perks that I could use. But yeah I'd choose FOSS any and every day.