What sort of irks me is what a mixed bag EU regulation is. Some is good (GDPR), not denying that. Some is annoying (you’re going to be accepting cookies 100 times a day until you’re dead thanks to them), and Whatsapp runs on all devices, so while interoperability nice, even as a free-software, Linux person I don’t really care.
However, if you have to deal with friends or family in the US and you don’t have an iPhone though, god help you. They don’t care about this.
I guess my complaint is that EU regulation may seem legally elegant, but I think it is sometimes quite blind to the real situation on the ground.
It looks good on the books but we still, say, don’t have a standard ARM boot process for smartphones that would help users not be dependent on whatever shitty ROM the OEM wants them to have. That would be life changing, but it will never even be talked about.
Whatsapp runs on all devices
Nope. Android, iOS, Windows and Mac are not all devices. And web versions are far from ideal (some may suggest expanding web capabilities, but please don’t).
Mimimimimimimimimi
If you have nothing to say, say nothing at all.
I partially agree with you, and of course I hate those cookie banners, they’re completely annoying.
But please remember that it’s not the EU’s fault is every website is trying to violate your privacy.
If websites weren’t tracking everything you do, then cookie banners wouldn’t be needed.
I think we should collectively ask for websites to stop spying on us, not changing the cookie banners regulation.
Yep, all the EU done is forced websites to have consent if the website want to process personal data. There are many analytics that does not process IP address or fingerprint and so does not require consent banner. Be annoyed on the websites, not this law.
And yet we live in a world where consent spam is actually harder to deal with than tracking, if you’re smart.
That’s already a solution to cookie banners: the “do not track” setting. It’s been tested in court in Germany and confirmed to count as rejected permission for GDPR purposes. Websites dinky have to obey it.
It’s currently slowly gaining traction, there’s a privacy advocacy group suing high profile targets over this to create awareness.
We also need a formal change to the cookie law/GDPR to acknowledge “do not track” as the preferred method. Then the banners will slowly go away.
Wait and see what happens when Google removes traditional tracking from Chrome and every sites start requiring registration to access content !
just get an extension and adblocker filters to automatically dismiss/block cookie dialogs and use an allowlist for sites from which you actually need to persist cookies in your browser’s settings and set your browser to delete everything else on exit. With Firefox and browsers based on it you can, in addition to that, use container tabs (try sticky containers extension) for even better context isolation.
Obviously. But that is very difficult on mobile.
on Firefox if a desktop addon has no mobile version you can look up how to add custom add-ons collections when it comes to cookie prompt blockers, but ublock origin and adding filters to it work out of the box. Recently also some apps started showing cookie prompts with no option to decline unless you pay, if they can work offline, make them so
The cookie consent also has a huge fail whale of unintended consequences - training users to click [accept], or really [anything], to make the annoyance just go away.
Nefarious actors have their run of the place now. They can slip onerous terms into EULAs and know they will largely be accepted.
That wont hold in court tho
Honestly would love to use signal to chat with my whatsapp contacts. Signal could just throw in privacy notice when messaging with someone whatsapp or facebook messenger.
Currently I have signal installed and used to use it to message with my so but we have both moved to discord and use whatsapp to communicate with those that do not use discord.
Then too bad… Dont talk to them. If people want to talk to me they have to install signal.
This is the only path forward.
This is the way!
If.
moving from signal to discord is not going to be exactly helpful for your privacy, discord is completely unencrypted
I am aware of that but when all our friends or commities either use whatsapp or discord then it’s just more convenient. Honestly messaging these days is a mess
- Teams and Slack for work
- Whatapp and Discord for family, friends and interests/communities
- Signal for the techsavy friends
I really miss that fleeting moment when all messaging apps were using either open protocols or at least they weren’t hostile against alternative clients. It was really nice to be able to use one client to log in to gtalk, msn etc. at the same time.
me neither
Meta wants to federate with the whole fediverse eventually. This is first up, then Threads. Remains to be seen if they’ll bother with a Lemmy instance but I wouldn’t be shocked.
So far though the response by the fediverse has been “nah”.
It’s… I guess the ghost of their XMPP abandonment.
EEE at its finest, like they did to XMPP
Wasn’t it google?
Both Google and Facebook.
It’s a good move; it shows they are no interested in popularity but Privacy and Security
I was hoping to move to signal in the whatapp network. Unfortunately in Brazil you cannot live without whatapp.
You could try and run both
Keep whatsapp, and slowly switch contacts to Signal (it might just be close friends and family). That’s what people around me are doing
I have both WhatsApp and Signal installed.
In the 3 years or so since I installed Signal, I haven’t had a single conversation on it. Only a handful of people from my Contact book are showing as Signal users, and none of them people I speak to regularly.
I live in anticipation of someone deciding to message me on there, but I’m not exactly optimistic at this point.
I met one person a few months ago who also used signal primarily. It did feel weird adding someone normally. Usually when I add someone it’s their first time with signal
My wife told me to fuck off when I installed signal on her phone 😔
Haha, that’s kinda funny. Then people are like.
Just tell your friends and family to stop using iMessage. Like everyone will be ok to switch their routine just like that.
It’s definitely not for everyone. For me it’s
- some use signal with me / others exclusively, sending the occasional message elsewhere when on a certain device or sharing within a platform
- some use signal for sensitive conversations, and use other platforms most of the time
- some just don’t. If I need to have a sensitive conversation with them, I do it in person
Sounds like you need some matrix bridges in your life.
Whatcha bridging to Matrix?
Honestly I started looking into a few of the easier ones and its a damn process so which one am I bridging? All of them. One at a time.
It’s on my list of things to explore soon 😄
I managed to convince one long distance friend a few years ago. So now I need to keep Signal just to be able to communicate with him.
This is what I hate most about the privacy community, too fanatical and purist to allow extremely useful optional features that would allow them to reach more people.
I use Signal whenever I can because I’m not comfortable with Meta harvesting metadata of my conversations with people. guess what happens if Signal made it possible to talk to Whatsapp accounts?
You could go on without doing it. I would like to use signal to signal, but there are literally zero people interested in my environment :-(
Using signal just me would be much better than using whatsapp directly, and would reduce the data collected.If signal suddenly stopped being mostly a geek desert and people could still talk to all their contacts, don’t you think they would be much more willing to move? The more people, the more people interested in migrating, and the less data for meta.
don’t you think they would be much more willing to move?
no, why would they, if they could talk to Signal anyway?
If the user base is signal’s big draw, I’m afraid we’re screwed with such a tiny one against those titans.
Signal users are far more likely to need to use whatsapp than the other way around, and migrating to signal is a huge loss with not very popular gains. I don’t see how it could compete on a level playing field, but that’s where the opportunity to eliminate signal’s huge disadvantage comes in.
Because when you give most people the choice of convenience vs privacy, they’ll choose the thing that they can feel 99 times out of 100(convenience ). Most people don’t care about metadata because first of all they have no idea that’s even a thing, let alone what it does. And they’re not visibly affected by it. The difference between using signal and Whatsapp for the vast majority of people is the fact that one is green and has everyone you know on it and the other is blue and nobody besides me uses it.
But, if you give signal the convenience of being able to use it with everyone, then the choice becomes “do I wanna use this app that my friend is saying is spying on me or do I wanna use the secure, hacker app?”
And hopefully, more and more people will switch and we can be rid of fucking meta
If it’s an optional feature why are you complaining that the other businesses are refusing their option to federate with Facebook?
The issue is simple: Facebook will work to leech users away from other services, strengthening their position into a monopoly (if it isn’t already in some places). It is not a good thing for Facebook to get access to more users and steal their data.
On the one hand I agree with them sticking to their guns.
On the other, the number of contacts I have using signal has dropped off a cliff, from 12 to just one. It certainly isn’t rising. The people I know who used it have abandoned it and went back to WhatsApp.
Getting rid of SMS support was a mistake.
I’d personally prefer that when messaging with someone using WhatsApp, they make clear to you that Facebook can and will have some metadata, but not the contents of the chat itself.
IMO a good but imperfect solution is preferable to nobody using Signal.
Perfect is the enemy of good
This is exactly the problem. If they support interoperability then they will allow their users to continue using the Signal app which has high security standards, even if the particular conversation is not as secure as native signal conversations and they can’t control what the third-party app does. This will help grow the Signal network (because now it is easier for WhatsApp users to incrementally switch to Signal) and become more secure.
By rejecting interoperability they may be slightly improving the privacy of the 1% of users where their conversation partner would have switched to Signal, but are harming privacy the 99% of users that will now need to switch to WhatsApp for those converstions and are harming their future network growth (which would bring even more users to a private solution).
I’d personally prefer that when messaging with someone using WhatsApp, they make clear to you that Facebook can and will have some metadata, but not the contents of the chat itself.
If you believe that, then I think you’re one of Zuckerberg’s proverbial “dumb fucks”. Not that I mean to be insulting, but that’s literally what he thinks of his users.
Facebook’s WhatsApp is almost certainly filled with backdoors and exploits. In particular, with Android they often bypass Play Store checks by bundling system apps directly via the manufacturer.
Im not one of his users and don’t want to be. That’s why I want an open and secure protocol for cross-client messaging.
Facebook’s WhatsApp is almost certainly filled with backdoors and exploits. In particular, with Android they often bypass Play Store checks by bundling system apps directly via the manufacturer.
Yes… which is why I don’t want to use it.
I would state it even more generally, something like “when chatting with WhatsApp/Facebook Messenger users Signal can only ensure no data is shared with third parties from your device …” or something around the lines of that
they make clear to you that Facebook can and will have some metadata, but not the contents of the chat itself.
You thought you’re safe and private when the content is encrypted? LOL, no. Metadata are much more useful to Facebook, and to the intelligence services.
“We Kill People Based on Metadata.” – General Michael Hayden, former Director of NSA and CIA
My point isn’t that metadata isn’t useful for them, there’s no need to be condescending about things I never said.
My point is metadata should be proected as content does. While IM platform needs to know which message should be delived to whom, they don’t need that after being delivered, nor have it profiled.
Agreed.
I disagree. When sending SMS you are leaking info like when, to whom and how big message you sent to a lot of spying agencies.
You do that regardless of which app you use to send SMS.
That’s why I don’t use SMS at all
Cool, but that’s not an argument against SMS support in Signal.
WhatsApp is end-to-end encrypted. How does all the data magically show up when you change phone which doesn’t have the same private key as the old phone? It’s like having a lock on your front door and giving the keys to a random neighbour. Most folks trade convenience for privacy or security. That trade is looking less and less appealing by the day.
Ehm, they don’t show up magically.
You have to backup directly to your new phone, otherwise it won’t get transfered.
I just did this, and I can 100% confirm that not backuped data won’t go to the new phone.
Also when logging in on the website version on pc, you need to keep whatsapp open on your phone to sync old messages and media to your pc if you want to be able to see them there.
Thanks. I stand corrected. I was one of those that paid $1 for life when WhatsApp was a new kid on there block but haven’t used it since news broke that Facebook acquired them like a decade ago. At the time, you had a new phone, your messages would transfer. Dunno how it is today after all those years but seems to be similar to Signal.
Based on the stories coming up on Facebook and their lack of moral / humane boundaries I still won’t trust them not to have access to a private key when their app is so invasive. Their whole model is based on behind the curtain trafficking.
Which is also exactly how Signal works too; I migrated both two days ago. Process was virtually identical.
I much prefer Signal, but can’t judge WhatsApp to harshly on this tbh.
It better be the same because WhatsApp uses the Signal encryption protocol!
If you get a new phone and don’t import anything from your existing phone, then messages you receive will be unable to be decrypted. Since WhatsApp uses the Signal encryption protocol, it’s fairly detailed how receiving a message which can’t be decrypted can start an initialization to the sender to retry sending the messages: https://signal.org/docs/specifications/sesame/#retry-requests-and-delivery-receipts
The signal app will prompt you when a contact’s public key is updated, but IIRC, by default Whatsapp will not do this, and it will automatically happen under the hood, which is why it appears like magic.
Thanks. Haven’t used them in like a decade so things seem to have changed. At the time, new phone meant your messages transferred automatically.
At the same time, even if Facebook requires a backup for the messages to show up, as the app is close sourced, how would one know for sure whether the app doesn’t harvest the private key anyway?
Sounds like you used Whatsapp pre Signal which happened in 2016: https://signal.org/blog/whatsapp-complete/
With regard to private key, for backups, this relies on the HSM in Apple and Android devices, so the private key is engineered to never be accessible by Facebook. Here’s how they say they use the HSM to encrypt the backups: https://engineering.fb.com/2021/09/10/security/whatsapp-e2ee-backups/
There’s no way to be 100% certain, but if Whatsapp were found to have access to the private keys, it would be huge damaging news, so why would they risk it? Security researchers can watch the traffic going to/from the app and the OS APIs being called, and can see the HSM being invoked. Despite it being closed source, that doesn’t mean it’s less secure and there’s no one verifying the security claims.
Thanks for explaining. It’s interesting and outside metadata there could be a case for data being secure. However, this is the same company that lied and got fined in the EU when they asserted that they wouldn’t be able to link WhatsApp and Facebook identities. This allowed the merger to happen. Security and privacy being something that the average Joe doesn’t care that much, it wouldn’t be too much of a negative impact when they already have so much bad press on other matters. Finally, from an ethical perspective, I’ll give this corp a miss. Values don’t really align with my personal ones even if privacy and security were beyond reproach.
Threema seems to solve a problem signal has that is it does’nt need a phone number to open account . But i haven’t used any of them so can’t say . (If anyone wanna know i use telgram foss which is a debloated fork of the original client)
Doesn’t signal now have username support? I thought i saw it released a week or so ago.
That doesn’t solve the issue that you have to give them a phone number to start an acc.
It still needs a phone number for registration. You just don’t need to share it with people you want to talk with.
You can use Session (getsession.org) without any phone number. It is based somewhat on the Signal code base, and it’s a decent alternative for some.
Threema is a paid service, so they are just identifying you with payment information instead of a phone number. I fail to see any more privacy. I guess its a bit more convenient.
You can pay anonymously with cash or btc.
Oh, Nice for desktop users.
On iOS you must share email and phone to pay for it.
Android users.
That’s not really a problem. The biggest problem Signal has is people not caring about privacy enough to use another messaging app.
If Signal dropped the phone number requirement they’d get a handful more users. If people started to care about privacy they’d get millions of new users.
Extremely bad take in my opinion. Not supporting alternatives means you force users into installing the alternatives
Nope. Fuck people stupid enough to use FBInc at all.
Using whatsapp is an absolute necessity in most of the world, its the only way to communicate with coworkers, classmates, businesses and even some government services. Not using it means you are essentially disconnected from the world. Good luck convincing more than 2 close friends to install Signal just to talk with you. No one uses SMS. FB really is that dominant.
Doesn’t give any reason to swallow that kind of sucker punch.
It’s OK to be “disconnected.”
Especially if “connected” implies dependency on one corporation which has shown general disregard for its customers’ privacy and mental health.
I don’t use Whatsapp, FB, Instagram, snapchat, google, and somehow manage to make my way through the world.
Believe it or not plenty of people still interact in meatspace, limited as it is.
It might be OK for you to be “disconnected”, but some of us have got stuff to do.
If you don’t live in a place with WhatsApp as the dominant chat app I don’t think you could get it. I don’t have FB, Instagram, Snapchat, Google, Outlook, or any form of social media, I am as disconnected as can be. But WA is truly inescapable.
Need to ask a very specific question about taxes? The government support person only answers through WhatsApp. Need to file an insurance report and even check if it was approved? WhatsApp. Need to schedule a certification exam? Whatsapp. Hell, more and more companies and government services are moving to WA only customer service/support, like not even help you if you show up in person and in some cases their phone lines (which are “always busy”) just direct you to their WhatsApp.
Its also the only way of reaching coworkers/classmates. Not for like socializing or messing around, but for group work, file sharing, scheduling meetings, sharing important/urgent announcements, etc. And good luck getting mere acquaintances to install a secondary chat app just to talk to you, when we can barely get our friends to install adblockers in their browsers. Well, there are other secondary ways to reach them, Facebook Messenger and Instagram DMs, but we both likely agree on what to make of these ones.
I hate Facebook and am aware of their practices, but they have reached an absolute dominance over communication in most of the world. You can’t just ignore them in day to day life.
The people who say “just don’t use WhatsApp” really don’t understand. They may as well be saying “just don’t use email”
For millions, possibly billions of people, it’s a straight-up requirement for partaking in modern society.
Like somebody else here said, the EU has handed Signal, on a silver platter, the chance to become a mainstream messaging app, and rather than embrace it, Signal have comprehensively rejected it.
Honestly, what are they doing?
Clearly written by someone from somewhere where WhatsApp isn’t de facto mandatory.
Yup and no fucks given.
Ooh you’re hard.
If you think think such of no respect for the FBInc or fucking any closed source software then, yeah, duh.
People could be using WhatsApp if they cared about it, but they chose signal for a reason. And making signal weaken its privacy for the purpose of reaching more people is against everything they stand for.
I would use signal if I could convince people to use signal.
I could convince people to use Signal if all their conversations were on signal and they could talk to people on WhatsApp in a seamless way.
Right now you MUST have WhatsApp if you have any kind of social life. Signal is the other app that no one has because it’s kind of a pain in the ass to have two messaging apps.
I would love to switch to Signal, but inter-compatibility with WhatsApp is a must. The EU is essentially handing them a golden opportunity on a silver platter to become a mainstream app, and they are like nah, we good wtf
The trouble is we end up having to install both when we could be only using Signal
Using only signal in such a scenario is like using only whatsapp today, to chat with whatsapp contacts. What are you hoping to gain?
Same goes for people who you convince to install Signal. They’ll end up never using it because they just forget about it and they’re not the ones who wanted to use it anyway. Being able to message people on WhatsApp through Signal would also make it a lot more easy to convince people to install it.
And once those people have it installed, they’ll talk to each other using signal-to-signal as opposed to signal-to-whatsapp!
It pretty much solves the chicken and egg problem, and yet they’re scoffing at it as a solution. IMO it’s a big mistake.
This is correct, and everybody who complains about how “hard” it is to use more than one messenger app is pathetic. That’s like the epitome of first world problems. People should be GLAD that they have the option of using Signal, instead of whining about how they didn’t build it the way they wanted it to be.
Its hard to get others to do so, for seemingly no reason. I have Signal installed, have had it for years, have told all my contacts about it. Only like 3 installed it, but quickly forgot about it. I still have to have WhatsApp installed to not fall off the world so they end up texting me from WA anyway.
Its not like SMS vs Signal where there is a clear benefit to the average Joe to use Signal, there’s no difference between Signal and WhatsApp to the average person so they will just keep using WhatsApp out of habit.
It’s not hard for me to get others to use it. I simply don’t have a Whatsapp account or anything else. If they want to contact me, they will use the right app.
Thats great, now try that with acquaintances, coworkeea, classmates or companies that only chat through WhatsApp. I wish I could go nuclear but WA is a necessity.
Your problem is you allow them to do that to you. I simply do not allow it, and it works out fine for me. Have never used WhatsApp a single time.
It is literally not a necessity. It’s a convenience that you are making yourself dependent on.
That’s a bummer. Means I have no alternative but to keep using WhatsApp then.
you’re getting downvoted for not being American 💀
Americans have something even worse: SMS
I’ve had this conversation before. The consensus last time was that I should tell every single person on my contacts list to download Signal if they want to stay in touch and if they refuse it means they’re shitty people that don’t care about me but I’m totally not a shitty person for forcing my preferences onto others.
People don’t realize that in most of Europe WhatsApp is more popular than iMessages are in the US. Not having WhatsApp means you’re not texting to anyone.
Yep. And it’s not just a Europe thing. WhatsApp is basically the only messaging app in South Asia, West Asia, south America and a lot of parts in Africa. Telling someone to stop using WhatsApp here is like telling an American to stop using E-Mail ans SMS.
Well for me it works and I have most of my people on either Signal or threema though threema is getting slowly obsolete
I never really understood why is it so complicated to also have Signal on the phone? I mean most people have a shit ton of stupid apps anyway. It’s not like it slows your phone down or anything. Just use Signal as well until most people also have it, and then you can choose to ditch the other apps. It’s like one extra icon in your app list. Also this is the fastest way to ditch shit apps, have everyone use Signal in parallel with the shit ones.
I’ve had Signal installed for years. There’s like 3 of my contacts that I never talk to anyway. Most people use facebook and tiktok and can’t even bother installing an adblocker. They’re not interested about a privacy focused messenger when they already got WhatsApp.
Wholeheartedly agree, but most people wont do it, so you end up with signal for 1 or 2 friends, telegram for a few others, and all the crap ones for the rest (whatsapp, slack, teams, messenger, etc)
Ive ditched every messaging app but signal and telegram, and its really annoying sometimes
I understand her point and imho that’s what makes signal a superior option to the others but because of these extreme choices I’ve seen the usage of signal gradually go down (might be wrong for the total number of users) around me. Now I don’t anyone who uses signal anymore.
it’s a real shame it’s ridiculous to be using whatsapp but I have whatsapp installed on my phone not signal because that’s what everyone uses.
So then it seems completely absurd signal is “not interested” in allowing any integration. They could just notify their users communications with WhatsApp users are unsecure.
Signal were fools to remove the SMS support from their app. That was a good way to get people in to use the system - they could have insecure SMS chats with those not on signal, and secure signal chats with those on it. The app would warn you when someone didn’t have signal and the chat was insecure.
It was a really good “trojan horse” route into people’s lives. I was using signal every day and it was easier encouraging others to make the switch because it was a convenient app.
Then the devs removed that and dumped all their users back onto other SMS apps.
Now I have 3 apps - an SMS app, Signal and WhatsApp. I barely ever use Signal now. I want to use it more but so few people I know use it, and it’s not the first place people message me from.
Removing SMS support was a huge strategic misstep. They should have been the bridge for people to move from SMS to secure chat.
While I do think you are correct, you have to remember a few things:
- SMS really isn’t used outside the US (and iMessage pretty much was the death of text messages and now iMessage also supports RCS)
- Open source projects can be strict about following a moral code
- Anything more than just sending secure messages is just an attack vector and more layers of code to maintain
Idk about other countries. But in India, SMS is pretty big for businesses to send updates to the customers. Like 2FA for bank transactions, delivery tracking, govt alerts etc. Customer to customer is almost nil except on rare occasions when maybe the internet is down and you need to send an urgent text.
And I should mention that domestic SMS is free (included with any active cellular plan)
A bit offtopic, but, are SMS free on the US?
Indeed, in my country SMS are not used at all. Too expensive compared to alternatives.
Here I pay 1 euro per month extra for unlimited calls+SMS. Still no one uses it.
I got my whole family on it, and generally all my closest friends have it as at least a backup. As the other chat apps falter it’s been easier to convert people.
I tried switching to Signal a couple years ago but I had to return to WhatsApp since literally no one of my friends and acquaintances did the jump. It wasn’t even considered an option by many. So it was either returning to Whatsapp or being cut off from everyone.
If people were a bit more open-minded Signal could be a good alternative. But alas…
can’t have 2 apps installed?
Same
Both Signal and Threema can now theoretically ask Meta to open access for basic messaging interoperability
Why is it a one-way thing? Would Meta ever be in a position to force Signal to interoperate?
Maybe eventually, it has to do with market share and if the service is a “core platform”. Signal doesn’t have enough market share to warrant it yet, even iMessage wasn’t forced to since it’s not that popular in EU. The law was mainly targeted at WhatsApp as that’s THE messenger in the EU.
