SimpleX is my favourite anon messenger but I wonder if I’d still use it if I could use Signal without a phone number.
Thoughts?
Depends on the threat model.
I prefer simple buckets and using best in each category.
Content privacy is best achieved with Signal.
Content privacy + metadata privacy with Cwtch.
(Content privacy + metadata privacy + endpoint security with TFC, not that it’s terribly popular).
SimpleX is unfortunately not anonymous: it still leaks your IP to the server by default. You’ll want Cwtch or Onion share chats or Ricochet Refresh to have no identifiers tied to your internet subscription and thus, banking information.
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True. I forget to think about this cos I have VPN always on and in lockdown mode.
Could also use Orbot if you wanted something a little more trust less.
Yeah SimpleX has really good Tor support after you install Tor: They swap to Onion Services when the app proxy settings are configured. The VPN probably does what you need here so it’s all good.
Ricochet refresh sounds really interesting. Why in your opinion do people not discuss this software more? Honestly the only mention I have heard of it was the old version is when a bunch of admins of a CSAM site got caught due to an outdated version of Ricochet. Outside of this instance though I have literally never heard of it.
People mostly want convince in their lives and unless their communication is so sensitive they need to figure out what truly works, they’ll pick more convenient tool any day.
But if you’re a dissident, activist or whistleblower who has to factor possible prison time into the convenience equation, chances are you’re fine with the lesser inconveniences the architecture brings.
As for the old Ricochet, all software is imperfect and there are attacks against them. But the principle of Onion Service based P2P messaging is still the best metadata resistance mechanism for IP, geolocation, user identifiers, and who talks to whom metadata. Also no (de)centralized servers prevents aggregating other types of metadata in centralized fashion.
Yeah, it’s probably Session, and that’s because I just like the UI and I do prefer the decentralized nature.
I think it’s one of the only messengers that has really shown how you can pretty much make private messaging censorship resistant. Because there’s no central server that everything depends on; the network is decentralized, with different nodes running the network.
I also like the way they incentivize people to run nodes because you get rewarded, kind of like with Bitcoin. I feel like if private messaging adopted something similar to the way crypto works, where people can run their own nodes and participate in the network, that would be a really big win for privacy.
I like to keep signal for IRL so yes.
The issue with this is, it’s ridiculously expensive to stake enough crypto to run a Session node. Like thousands of dollars from memory. The whole crypto thing seemed really weird to me. They wanted to avoid using Tor so it could be fast enough to make phone calls, but honestly I think they should have just used Tor. The architecture is incredibly expensive to run and long term I don’t think the messenger will survive unfourtunately. SimpleX I think will though.