- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
I currently use Telegram for my friends and family, but have reluctantly come to the conclusion that the UK Government is either reaching agreement for backdoors with messaging services, or is trying its hardest to.
I’m also on Element/Matrix. Before I try to get my contacts to join me on there, should I be aware of any privacy issues or is that a good place to head?
The downside of Signal is that it’s centralized, and thus at the whim of those who run it. Structurally, it’s not really different from Whatsapp or Telegram except for who owns it.
That’s not true. WhatsApp is fully proprietary and Telegram doesn’t use E2EE by default. And even if you enable it, they use a weak encryption protocol.
I don’t think that’s a fair comparison, simply because their structures are quite different. Signal is FOSS run by a 501©3 non-profit, whereas Whatsapp is obviously run by Meta and data mines its users; Telegram is also a nonprofit, but privacy was never their goal or mission.
They’re all centralized, which I agree is a negative, but if something must be centralized, being run by a nonprofit foundation whose mission is privacy and E2EE is about the best option you could hope for in that scenario.
There should be a difference between using Whatsapp while in a county with good privacy laws (like one of the EU member) or one without.
As far as I know Meta only collects and abuses data it get’s from people where there are now laws in place to prevent it (so why wouldn’t they do it).
We should normalise the audits on security and privacy that are done by proper accountants. It doesn’t help that a lot of people call bookkeepers accountants which isn’t correct, but a signature from an accountant (CPA/AA/RA or whatever) should have some impact to prove the services are secure or private.
Unfortunately, in practice, the laws don’t seem to mean much to the wealthy.
Like other gigantic companies that have billions of dollars, it’s easier and more profitable to ask forgiveness than permission; paying legal fines that are 0.01% of their overall profits is just the cost of doing business. Zuck has been caught on multiple occasions skirting the law (see the most recent revelation of them surreptitiously leeching scores of books from Anna’s Archive and a previous one of partnering with Cambridge Analytica, for example).
I’m all good with having companies submit to hostile financial audits, but I’m not sure how a CPA would be qualified to validate security or privacy. Code security audits should be done by cryptographic experts, and I think you would need both.
Perhaps one day, we’ll have Certified Public Cryptographers that have a fiduciary duty to ensure people are secure or private.
Like openai and proton?
We are still in a trust me bro situation… We just trust signal bro more than meta bro.
Iirc Proton has been audited for security and for privacy as well.
We have systems in place to help with it
No we’re not. You don’t have to trust Signal, everything is open source, you can actually verify it.
Sorta like those. Anybody that thought OpenAI was trustworthy just by virtue of being a nonprofit gets what they deserve for being so credulous, and Proton isn’t directly comparable, because it’s a stack of software, not just one. You would have to compare the analog of Signal, and Proton doesn’t have one.
If what you really want to say is that we don’t know with 100% certainty that the Signal Foundation is operating in good faith, then I agree, though they seem to have a pretty decent track record thus far.
However, that doesn’t mean their software doesn’t do what is expected (it’s FOSS, go inspect and build it yourself), and E2EE ensures that even if they suddenly wanted or were ordered to turn anything over, the data LEOs get would be limited, if it exists at all.
I’m not sure what you think is especially noteworthy here. It’s always some level of a “trust me bro” situation. That’s how the internet works. If you want to avoid trust issues, stop using the internet.