What's the best messaging platform?

Hi, I wanna know what is the most secure and best messaging app/platform... Need an app that is crossplatform and has a very good numbers of features and security. (And it has to be FLOSS) I thought about XMPP clients, Signal, Session, IRC clients.. Propose and explain me your choice

30 comments

It's basically just Signal if you want ease of use + good security. Not totally 100% since it is funded almost exclusively by the US govt, and I can't be sure if the encryption is not backdoored, but it's the best bet we got. IRC: not secure, XMPP / Matrix maybe ok but hard to use for most, Telegram wouldn't really trust though in theory has e2e, Whatsapp and Google world stuff even less faith. Honestly none of it is super great, but Signal has the best balance imo. There's also some crypto based messaging stuff that's used on darknets but that's the clunkiest
I think the only fully guaranteed method is having a pre shared one time pad encryption key between two parties & then send the encrypted text however you want (ex post on a far corner of a mostly dead online forum or Reddit). That doesn't have any fancy algos that may be bugged, or private/public key stuff
- I think we can be pretty damn sure that the encryption is not backdoored since the Signal Protocol is the gold standard in encryption nowadays and thousands if not more highly skilled cryptographers without tied to the US govt looked at it thoroughly. Also Snowden calls Signal the best messenger on the grounds on him using it daily and still being alive so that's also a pretty good sign.
  Also, do you have a source about them being mainly funded by the US govt? In their blog they talked about mainly being funded by small donors and a few initial loans from people who care about privacy.
  
  Also Snowden calls Signal the best messenger on the grounds on him using it daily and still being alive so that's also a pretty good sign.
  The real litmus test right here.
  
  Ok, my bad, it's not mostly funded now (though funding isn't totally clear for all of its history) but we do know it was handed 3m near the start by Open Technology Fund which an arm of the US Agency for Global Media which is the US govt, and at best has the mission of pushing us news ideology globally. Ex they did Radio Free Asia after tianamen square, and guess what, that was conceptualized by none other than senator Joe Biden
  Yeah the encryption is probably okay, and I use it daily, but these backdoors are often hella sneaky and we know that the US govt loves doing shit like that if they can
  
  I think than Signal messages are mostly not backdoored but maybe all the profile picture, the name and the description are surely leaked to US gov if they found most of the servers
- Okay thanks, and when you speak about "crypto based messaging" what does it means?
  
  Various schemes to use the cryptography of blockchains to send messages in a decentralized and theoretically secure way. The classic version of this used by early darknets was Bitmessage. There's some more recent takes via Ethereum too

matrix with element as client.
If you really care about privacy you can hist a matrix server without much resources needed.

- I've seen it sometimes before, and it seems to be pretty decent

I ran into one called SimpleX recently. No accounts or anything and you can host your own chat instance. Downside: The app either needs a constant spot in your notifications or will otherwise only check for messages every ten minutes.
The desktop app is pretty rough to use, as well.

I think this question has some sort of relativity. What is your threat model ? Are you trying to protect your data from the service itself, fromyour mom, from the police ? You want anonimity ? And so on.
There is no an ultimate answer to this question. For example, i'm using WhatsApp because it fits my threat model (messages are encrypted, metadata is not but for me is fine). Then, i use Signal with people that use Signal (where i live, 99% of people use WhatsApp).
I would never use Telegram since is not encrypted by default.

Any message application that requires that you first sign in on a phone is garbage.
- Right but wouldn't say garbage, more something like bad or really bad

I'm intrigued by Threema.
But I have enough trouble getting people to use Telegram and Signal.
In the end, don't let perfection be the enemy of better than what you have.
For example I use WhatsApp for like 80% of my communication because 80% of them are non-nerds that are barely moving from rawdogging SMS to an encrypted platform. I'd rather use WhatsApp than SMS.
I don't have any meta accounts and my WhatsApp number is different than my cell number and is registered internationally in a privacy focused country. So to Meta, I'm protected by those rules and any invasion of my data by government forces would need an excuse big enough for international cooperation. Not just the local PD of a podunk town.
- I've found that SimpleX is one the best option, it use the Signal protocol + more and has really robust anonymity (in fact it's Signal but without inconvenients) Threema is a company, you shouldn't use it
  
  It's a company that's model is one I support. If you're not paying for the service, you are the product. Eventually the free-ness of other solutions will run out. There's only so much VC money and grant money that doesn't have alterior motives.
  Paying a company to provide a service, which does cost real money to operate, makes me more happy if they abide by their rules.
  But it's a snowball type issue. I'm not going to use Threema if nobody else I need to talk to doesn't use it. And they aren't going to use it if nobody else does. WhatsApp has critical mass across the world except USA because iDiots don't understand. Signal and Telegram have mostly negative awareness due to copaganda telling the general populace that encryption is bad and only shady people use encryption to hide criminal activity. Everything else, (excluding China and their whole different ecosystem) is really just nerd talk between nerds.

30 comments